Charles Angoff

Angoff was born on April 22, 1902 in Minsk, then Russia (now Belarus). His father was a tailor named John Jacob Angoff; his mother was named Anna Pollack. In 1908, the Angoffs left Russia and settled near Boston, Massachusetts. By age 12, he began writing poetry. He became a naturalized citizen in 1923.[1]

He studied at Harvard University from 1919 to 1923 on a scholarship and majored in philosophy.[1]

In 1923, Angoff began his career in journalism at a local weekly. He answered an advertisement by H. L. Mencken, who hired him as an assistant in 1925. He worked on the editorial staff of Mencken's American Mercury magazine until 1931, when he became managing editor. He wrote articles for the magazine, either signing them with pseudonyms or publishing them anonymously. Mencken and publisher Alfred Knopf felt Angoff was too leftist and sold the magazine privately in January 1935. Angoff joined the editorial board of The Nation magazine and then became editor of American Spectator until it folded in 1937. From 1943 to 1951, he served as managing editor of the American Mercury.[1]

During his final years at the American Mercury, Angoff began publishing more books. When the magazine closed in 1951, he began publishing a series about the Polonskys, a family of assimilating, immigrant Jews. It started with Journey to the Dawn (1951). The trilogy grew to eleven volumes and unfinished twelfth. He wrote a rather controversial biography, H. L. Mencken: A Portrait from Memory (1956) about the subject's anti-Semitism. He wrote several books of poetry.[1]

In the mid-1950s, Angoff became an English professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University. He co-founded the quarterly The Literary Review and helped found the Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, launched in 1967.[1]

He retired in 1976 to the Upper West Side of New York City.[1]

• American Spectator
• Real Aims of Catholicism (1928)
• Literary History of the American People (1931)
• World Over In... (1938)
• Palestrina, Savior of Church Music, illustrated by William Brady (1944)
• Adventures in Heaven (1945, 1970)
• Handbook of Libel: A Practical Guide for Editors and Authors (1946, 1966)
• Fathers of Classical Music, illustrated by La Verne Reiss (1947, 1969)
• When I was a Boy in Boston, illustrated by Samuel Gilbert (1947, 1970)
• Journey to the Dawn (1951)
• In the Morning Light (1953)
• Sun at Noon (1955)
• H. L. Mencken, A Portrait from Memory (1956)
• Something About My Father, and Other People (1956)
• Between Day and Dark (1959)
• Bitter Spring (1961)
• Summer Storm (1963)
• Tone of the Twenties, and Other Essays (1966)
• Bell of Time: A Book of Poems, foreword by Joseph Joel Keith (1967)
• Memoranda for tomorrow; a book of poems (1968)
• Memory of Autumn (1968)
• Stories from the Literary Review (1969)
• Winter Twilight (1970)
• Prayers at Midnight: A Book of Prose Poems (1971)
• Season of mists (1971)
• Mid-Century (1973)
• Emma Lazarus, Poet, Jewish Activist, Pioneer Zionist (1979)
• Toward the Horizon (1980)

• Arsenal for Skeptics, edited by Richard W. Hinton (pseudonym) (1934)
• Stradivari, the Violin-Maker, by Helen Tinyanova (1938)
• Theatre Book of the Year, by George Jean Nathan (1943)
• American Mercury Reader: A Selection of Distinguished Articles, Stories, and Poems Published in the American Mercury during the Past Twenty Years,,, edited by Lawrence Spivak and Charles Angoff (1944, 1979)
• Five Minute Classics, by Julius Washington (1945)
• Modern Stories from Many Lands: [The Literary Review Book], selected and edited by Clarence R. Decker [and] Charles Angoff (1963, 1972)
• Humanities in the Age of Science: In Honor of Peter Sammartino, edited by Charles Angoff (1968)
• African Writing Today: Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Zambia, selected and edited by Charles Angoff [and] John Povey (1969)
• George Sterling: A Centenary Memoir-Anthology, edited by Charles Angoff (1969)
• Rise of American Jewish literature: An Anthology of Selections from the Major Novels, edited by Charles Angoff and Meyer Levin (1970)
• Diamond Anthology, edited by Charles Angoff [and others], foreword by Charles Angoff (1971)
• Papers and Discussions by Conrad Cherry [and Others], edited by Charles Angoff (1974)
• William Carlos Williams: Papers by Kenneth Burke [and Others], edited by Charles Angoff (1974)
• Science and the Human Imagination: Albert Einstein: Papers and Discussions, by Jeremy Bernstein and Gerald Feinberg (1978)
• Biology and the Future of Man: Papers, by Nathan Hershey, Merril Eisenbud, edited by Charles Angoff (1978)
• World of George Jean Nathan: Essays, Reviews & Commentary, edited by Charles S. Angoff ; epilogue by Patricia Angelin (1998)

• Old Century and the New: Essays in Honor of Charles Angoff, edited by Alfred Rosa (1978)
• Man from the Mercury: A Charles Angoff Memorial Reader, edited, with an introduction by Thomas Yoseloff (1986)