Leonard Wolf is a poet, author, teacher, and the father of Naomi Wolf

Naomi Wolf

Naomi Wolf is an American author and political consultant. With the publication of The Beauty Myth, she became a leading spokesperson of what was later described as the third wave of the feminist movement.-Biography:...

. He is known for his authoritative annotated editions of classic gothic horror novels, including Dracula

Dracula

Dracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor...

, Frankenstein

Frankenstein

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...

, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is the original title of a novella written by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson that was first published in 1886. The original pronunciation of Jekyll was "Jeekul" which was the pronunciation used in Stevenson's native Scotland...

, and The Phantom of the Opera

The Phantom of the Opera

Le Fantôme de l'Opéra is a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux. It was first published as a serialisation in "Le Gaulois" from September 23, 1909 to January 8, 1910...

, and critical works on the topic, as well as translations from Yiddish of works ranging from those of Isaac Bashevis Singer

Isaac Bashevis Singer

Isaac Bashevis Singer – July 24, 1991) was a Polish Jewish American author noted for his short stories. He was one of the leading figures in the Yiddish literary movement, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978...

 to Winnie the Pooh.

Born in Vulcan, Romania

Romania

Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

 (Transylvania

Transylvania

Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...

), Leonard was originally named 'Ludovic', changed upon his arrival in the United States in 1930 with his mother, Rose-ita, and older brother, Maxim. He wrote and published numerous poems, short stories, book reviews and articles, and was part of the Berkeley Renaissance of the late 1940s and 1950s. He was a professor of English at San Francisco State University (SFSU) until moving to New York around 1980, focussing on teaching poetry. He is the author of several books including A Dream of Dracula, Blood Thirst, 100 Years of Vampire Fiction (editor), Bluebeard : The Life and Crimes of Gilles De Rais, Doubles, Dummies and Dolls : Twenty-One Terror Tales of Replication (editor), Dracula : the Connoisseur's Guide, False Messiah, Horror - A Connoisseur's Guide To Literature And Film, Monsters: Twenty Terrible and Wonderful Beasts From The Classic Dragon And Colossal Minotaur To King Kong And The Great Godzilla, Quiromancia/ Chiromancy, The False Messiah, Voices from the love generation (Little, Brown, 1968), The Glass Mountain: A Novel (Overlook Press, 1993), The Passion of Israel [By] Leonard Wolf. Interviews Taken and Edited in Collaboration with Deborah Wolf, Wolf s Complete Book of Terror (editor), and Vini-Der-Pu: A Yiddish Translation of Winnie the Pooh (Dutton 2000).

Wolf lives in New York. His daughter Naomi published The treehouse: eccentric wisdom from my father on how to live, love, and see in 2005 (Simon & Schuster). He has been appointed to write the authorized biography of Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Happening House

While teaching at San Francisco State University in 1967, Leonard started Happening House. Happening House was one of many organizations that originated with the Flower children of the Haight Ashbury. It was conceived as an alternate University, an Arts center and a place of learning. It often planned and sponsored social events such as softball games and free concerts in collaboration with the Haight Ashbury Switchboard
It had intermittent connections with the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic.

External links