Emeritus Professor Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky biographer, dies at 94

Joseph Frank, Professor Emeritus of Slavic Languages and Literatures, died last week in Palo Alto. He was 94.

Frank came to Stanford from Princeton in 1985. He was best known for his magisterial biography of Dostoevsky, called Dostoevsky, a Writer in His Time, which was published in five volumes between 1976 and 2002 . The work is widely considered the best biography of the author in any language, including Russian, and it has been called one of the best author biographies ever written. He is survived by his wife, Marguerite Straus Frank, two daughters, a brother, and two grandchildren.