Joseph Frank (October 6, 1918 – February 27, 2013) was an American literary scholar and leading expert on the life and work of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. Frank's five-volume biography of Dostoevsky is frequently cited among the major literary biographies of the 20th century.

Biography

Joseph Frank was born Joseph Nathaniel Glassman on the Lower East Side of

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

in 1918. His father died when he was young, his mother remarried William Frank, and the family moved to

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

. Frank attended classes at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

in the 1930s and the

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United Stat ...

in the early 1940s, but never earned a

Bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...

. Frank went to Paris on a Fulbright Scholarship in 1950, and in 1952 he was accepted by the

Committee on Social Thought The John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought is one of several PhD-granting committees at the University of Chicago. It was started in 1941 by historian John Ulric Nef along with economist Frank Knight, anthropologist Robert Redfield, and Univers ...

at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

, where he eventually earned a

Ph.D A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

. In 1953, he married mathematician

Marguerite Frank Marguerite Straus Frank (born September 8, 1927) is a French-American mathematician who is a pioneer in convex optimization theory and mathematical programming. Education After attending secondary schooling in Paris and Toronto, Frank contribut ...

. He taught at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

and

Rutgers Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and w ...

, and was a professor of

comparative literature Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across linguistic, national, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role similar to that of the study ...

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...

from 1966 to 1985. He finished his teaching career at Stanford. Frank died of pulmonary failure in 2013, survived by his wife and their two daughters.

Work

Frank began work on his Dostoevsky biography in the 1970s. Originally conceived as a single volume, it ultimately grew to five volumes totaling more than 2,400 pages. A single condensed version of the five volumes was published in 2010 under the title ''Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time''. It has been called the best biography of Dostoevsky in any language, including Russian. As a scholar of comparative literature, Frank earned honors including the Modern Language Association's James Russell Lowell Prize (1977 and 1986) and the Distinguished Contributions Award of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (2008). In 2019, Princeton University Press published ''Lectures on Dostoevsky'', a collection of Frank's never-before-published Stanford lectures on Dostoevsky's major works.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Frank, Joseph 1918 births 2013 deaths Literary scholars Fyodor Dostoyevsky Fulbright alumni