Mid-Century

by Charles Angoff

349 pages, Hardcover

First published December 31, 1973

About the author

Charles Angoff was born in Minsk, Russian Empire (now Belarus), in 1902 and his family left Russia and settled near Boston, Massachusetts, in 1908. By age 12, he began writing poetry. He became a naturalized citizen in 1923.

He studied at Harvard University from 1919 to 1923 on a scholarship and majored in philosophy. In 1923, Angoff began his career in journalism and by 1943, until 1951, he served as managing editor of the American Mercury.

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 an unfinished twelfth. He wrote a biography, H. L. Mencken: A Portrait from Memory (1956) and several books of poetry.

In the mid-1950s, Angoff became an English professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University until his retirement in 1967.

In 1954, he received the National Jewish Book Award for In the Morning Light and again in 1969 for Memory of Autumn. Angoff received various other awards (1954-1977).

Source: Wikipedia (shortened)