Frank MacShane

Background

Frank MacShane was born on October 19, 1927, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. He was a son of a journalist who became the publisher of the New York Journal-American.

Education

Frank MacShane studied at Harvard University where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1949. He received a Master of Arts degree at Yale University in 1951. In 1955, MacShane was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree at the University of Oxford.

Career

Frank MacShane started his career as a teacher at McGill University in Montreal, where he worked for two years. After that, he took up a post of a visiting lecturer in English at Vassar College, where he worked from 1958 to 1959. Then he was appointed an associate professor at the University of California at Berkeley. MacShane worked as a teacher at Williams College from 1965 to 1967. In 1967, he took up a post of professor of English at Columbia University and also founded the graduate writing division in the School of the Arts at Columbia University, which was to remain his base for the rest of his academic career. At Columbia he founded a "translation center", producing an academic journal called Translation Magazine.

Frank MacShane published his first book, The Life of Raymond Chandler, in 1976. His next book, The Life of John O’Hara in 1980, was published in 1980. He also wrote such books as Into Eternity: The Life of James Jones, American Writer, and Return Trip Tango and Other Stories from Abroad. MacShane translated such works as Miguel Seranno's Mysteries, edited several others including Impressions of Latin America: Five Centuries of Travel and Adventure by English and North American Writers, and contributed to numerous periodicals.

Achievements

• Frank MacShane was an American educator, writer, and translator who was known for his books about Raymond Chandler and James Jones. He is also famous for his translation of Miguel Seranno's works.
  
  MacShane received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, US & Canada in 1974. His books were nominated for Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical Work.

Works

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• book

  • Into Eternity: The Life of James Jones American Wirter

    (Traces the life of Jones, whose first novel, From Here to...)

    1985
  • Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler

    (In letters written between 1937 and 1959, Chandler commen...)

    1981
  • The Life of Raymond Chandler 1976
  • Return Trip Tango and Other Stories from Abroad 1992