Joseph Frank (writer)

Joseph Frank (1918-2013) was a prominent American literary scholar and biographer, best known for his comprehensive, five-volume biography of the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. This magnum opus, published between 1976 and 2002, is widely considered the definitive biographical study of Dostoevsky, offering a rich and nuanced portrait of the author against the backdrop of 19th-century Russian history, culture, and intellectual movements.

Frank's Dostoevsky biography departed from earlier, often psychoanalytically-driven interpretations, instead focusing on the social, political, and philosophical contexts that shaped Dostoevsky's life and work. He meticulously researched primary sources, including letters, notebooks, and archival materials, to reconstruct Dostoevsky's intellectual and emotional development.

Beyond his work on Dostoevsky, Frank wrote extensively on modernism, existentialism, and French literature. He taught at several prestigious universities, including Princeton, Stanford, and the University of California, Santa Cruz, and was a recipient of numerous awards and honors for his scholarship, including the National Book Critics Circle Award. His insightful and rigorously researched scholarship has profoundly influenced the study of Dostoevsky and Russian literature in the English-speaking world.