Frederic Prokosch (May 17 1908 – June 6 1989) was an American writer, known for his novels and poetry. He was also a distinguished translator.

He was born in Madison, Wisconsin, into an intellectual family who travelled widely, and was precociously bright, finishing his first degree at age 18. He was educated at Haverford College, Yale University and King's College, Cambridge. Subsequently he led a peripatetic life, meeting many of the literary figures of his time. His interests were sport (tennis and squash) and lepidoptery .

He was celebrated for his novels of the mid-1930s. Subsequently popular interest in his writing dropped away, but he gained higher status critically, with André Gide and other French writers and Gore Vidal among his champions.

He died in Grasse, France.

Works

• The Somnambulists (1933) poems
• The Asiatics (1935) novel
• The Assassins (1936) poems
• The Seven Who Fled (1937) novel
• The Carnival (1938) poems
• Night of the Poor (1939) novel
• Death at Sea (1940)
• Some poems of Friedrich Hoelderlin (1943) translator
• Chosen Poems (1945)
• The Age of Thunder (1945)
• Louise Labé, Love sonnets (1947) translator
• The Missolonghi Manuscript (1968) novel
• Voices: a Memoir (1983) autobiography

References

• Frederic Prokosch (1964) Radcliffe Squires

External link

• Prokosch as literary forger