MANUEL, Fritzie Prigohzy 1910-

PERSONAL:

Born 1910; married Frank Edward Manuel (a scholar and author), 1936 (deceased, 2003). Education: New York University, graduated, 1934.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—c/o Author mail, American Philosophical Society, 104 South Fifth Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106-3387.

CAREER:

Author of nonfiction and translator.

AWARDS, HONORS:

(With husband, Frank E. Manuel) Frederick Melcher Award, and Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, both 1980, and National Book Award, 1983, all for for Utopian Thought in the Western World.

WRITINGS:

(And translator and editor with husband, Frank E. Manuel) French Utopias: An Anthology of Ideal Societies, Free Press (New York, NY), 1966.

(With Frank E. Manuel) Utopian Thought in the Western World, Belknap Press (Cambridge, MA), 1979.

(With Frank E. Manuel) James Bowdoin and the Patriot Philosophers, American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia, PA), 2003.

Contributor to several photography books.

SIDELIGHTS:

Jointly with her husband, educator and historian Frank E. Manuel, Fritzie Prigohzy Manuel is a respected contributor to the history of social philosophy. The Manuels married in 1936, soon after Fritzie graduated from New York University's Washington Square College. Their collaboration extended beyond married life, as the two coauthored several books, including French Utopias: An Anthology of Ideal Societies and Utopian Thought in the Western World. The latter gained fame, winning the National Book Award, the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, and the Frederick Melcher Award following its 1979 publication. The Manuels' final book, James Bowdoin and the Patriot Philosophers, was published in 2003, the year Frank Manuel passed away.

The Manuels' most widely read book, Utopian Thought in the Western World, chronicles the history of Western utopian thought by tracing the philosophy of such intellectuals as Francis Bacon, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx, and others. Praising the work as a "challenging" volume "of monumental scope, written with authority, wit and unfailing lucidity," New York Times Book Review contributor Leo Marx cited as particularly refreshing the couple's "unpretentiousness," a quality that "distinguishes their work from that of many latter-day 'psychohistorians.'" In the critic's opinion, the book's "success is attributable to a thoroughly assimilated Freudian anthropology. The Manuels regard utopianism as Western culture's distinctive expression of a universal propensity for creating imaginary havens of delight."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

New York Times Book Review, October 21, 1979, Leo Marx, review of Utopian Thought in the Western World, p. 3; May 10, 1981, Anatole Broyard, "The Author-Scholars," p. 47.*