CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Novelist Henry William Hoffman, a native of Charleston and longtime professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, has died at age 84.

His 13 novels and four short-story collections were acclaimed in literary circles. Much of his writing had a West Virginia or Appalachia setting. A West Virginia Wesleyan College entry about him says:

"Religion and its values, life and its searches, morality and its articulation are central to the fiction. His characters, encompassing the spectrum of mankind, find their humanness as the common denominator. ... Each story is a finely wrought artifact where life is both tragic and courageous, but never without hope."

Hoffman was born in 1925, was raised in Charleston's East End, attended Kentucky Military Institute and was a medical corpsman in World War II. His first two novels, "The Trumpet Unblown" and "Days in the Yellow Leaf," were about the war.

Service and burial were held in Virginia.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Novelist Henry William Hoffman, a native of Charleston and longtime professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, has died at age 84.

His 13 novels and four short-story collections were acclaimed in literary circles. Much of his writing had a West Virginia or Appalachia setting. A West Virginia Wesleyan College entry about him says:

"Religion and its values, life and its searches, morality and its articulation are central to the fiction. His characters, encompassing the spectrum of mankind, find their humanness as the common denominator. ... Each story is a finely wrought artifact where life is both tragic and courageous, but never without hope."

Hoffman was born in 1925, was raised in Charleston's East End, attended Kentucky Military Institute and was a medical corpsman in World War II. His first two novels, "The Trumpet Unblown" and "Days in the Yellow Leaf," were about the war.

Service and burial were held in Virginia.