Charles Angoff
| Charles Angoff | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 22, 1902 Minsk |
| Died | May 3, 1979 (aged 77) New York City |
| Spouse(s) | Sara Freedman |
| Children | Nancy Angoff |
| Awards | Honorary Doctor of Letters (Fairleigh Dickinson University), Charles Angoff Award (The Literary Review) |
| Academic work | |
| Era | 20th Century |
| Institutions | Fairleigh Dickinson University |
| Main interests | English literature |
Charles Angoff (April 22, 1902 – May 3, 1979) was a managing editor of the American Mercury magazine as well as a professor of English of Fairleigh Dickinson University. H. L. Mencken called him "the best managing editor in America." He was also a prolific writer and editor.
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.
He studied Harvard University from 1919 to 1923 on a scholarship and majored in philosophy.
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.
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.
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.
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