Allen Mandelbaum was born in Albany, New York, on May 4, 1926, the son of Albert Naphtali Mandelbaum, a rabbi ordained at what is now Yeshiva University, and Leah (Gordon) Mandelbaum. He was raised in Louisville, Kentucky; Troy, New York; Toronto, Canada (home of his maternal grandfather, a rabbi); Chicago, Illinois; and, from the age of thirteen, New York, New York. On December 21, 1947, he married Marjorie Bogat. They had one child, Jonathan Renato Mandelbaum.

Academic Career

Mandelbaum received a B.A. (summa cum laude) from Yeshiva University in 1945; an M.A. (First Class Honors) from Columbia University in 1946 (Thesis: Of Mind and Metaphor: A Study in Richard Crashaw and Gerard Manley Hopkins); and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1951 (Thesis:   Stasis and Dynamis: Two Modes of the Literary Imagination). While working toward his degrees, he taught at Cornell University, Columbia University, Yeshiva University, and Hunter College of The City University of New York. From 1950-1951, he was a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow in Humanities.

From 1951-1954, Mandelbaum was a member of Harvard University's Society of Fellows, spending most of his appointment in Italy. After the Society of Fellows, he was a Fulbright Research Scholar in Italy from 1954-1956 and afterwards stayed in Italy until 1964. In the latter years of this period abroad, he served as director of the printworks at Cassino and later directed La Tipografica at Rome.

When Mandelbaum returned to the United States, he taught at Sarah Lawrence College from 1964-1965, and then from 1965-1980 served as a member of the faculty of the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York as Professor of English and Comparative Literature. From 1972 to 1980, he chaired the English Department, after which time he became professor emeritus . He also helped administer the Italian Literature Ph.D. track in Comparative Literature in consortium with New York University.

In 1975, Mandelbaum visited Washington University in St. Louis as Hurst Professor of Creative Writing. In 1977, he visited the University of Denver as a Professor of English and the University of Houston as Honors Professor of Humanities. From 1980-1981, he was Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 1983, he was Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Purdue University.

In 1989, Mandelbaum joined the faculty of Wake Forest University as William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Humanities.

Publications as a Translator

Mandelbaum's published works as a translator include a volume of selected poems by Giuseppe Ungaretti, entitled Life of a Man, published in 1958, and a volume of poems by Salvatore Quasimodo, entitled  Selected Writings, published in 1960. In 1975, he published  Selected Poems of Giuseppe Ungaretti. In 1993, he published his translation of a selection of poems by David Maria Turoldo. A projected volume of translations of poems by Eugenio Montale never appeared, although several of Mandelbaum's translations of poems by Montale appear in  Montale in English (2004), edited by Harry Thomas.

In 1972, Mandelbaum published The Aeneid of Virgil, a verse translation which won the National Book Award in 1973. A new edition was published in 1981, an edition which included, in place of the several drawings of Guy Davenport that adorned the 1972 edition, thirteen drawings by Barry Moser.

Beginning in 1980, Mandelbaum began to publish his three-volume verse translation of Dante's Divine Comedy in editions with Dante's Italian on the facing page. Each volume included illustrations by Barry Moser. Mandelbaum's translation of  Inferno was published in 1980,  Purgatorio in 1982, and  Paradiso in 1984.

In 1986, Mandelbaum published Ovid in Sicily, which featured his translation of select passages from Ovid's   Metamorphoses with parallel Latin text and fourteen color plates from the  Ovidiane sequence of paintings by Marialuisa de Romans. In 1993, Mandelbaum published his full verse translation of Ovid's  Metamorphoses.

In 1989, in commemoration of the centennial of the Giuseppe Ungaretti's birth, Mandelbaum published a book printed in limited edition (99 copies) called Ungaretti and Palinurus. In this volume his translations of poetry by Ungaretti and Vergil, with parallel original texts in Italian and Latin, appeared along with three engravings by Marialuisa de Romans.

In 1990, Mandelbaum published his verse translation of The Odyssey of Homer in an edition embellished by twelve engravings of Marialuisa de Romans.

In 1993, Mandelbaum published his verse translation of The Metamorphoses of Ovid. Translation that originally appeared in  Ovid in Sicily was incorporated with minor changes. A detail of  From the Garden from the Lightner Museum Series of Anna Tomczak adorned the verso of each of the title pages of the fifteen books of the poem.

Publications of His Own Poetry

Mandelbaum published his first volume of his own poetry, entitled Journeyman, in 1967. His second volume,  Leaves of Absence, was published in 1976.

In 1977, in association with the Jewish Publication Society of America, Mandelbaum published Chelmaxioms: The Maxims, Axioms, Maxioms of Chelm. The front matter includes a portrait of Mandelbaum by Barry Moser.

In 1980, Mandelbaum published A Lied of Letterpress.

Mandlebaum published his final book of verse, The Savantasse of Montparnasse, in 1987. Ten drawings from  The Savantasse Scrolls by Marialuisa de Romans accompany the poems.

Other Publications and Editorial Work

Awards and Honors

In 1976, Mandelbaum was decorated with the Order of Merit by the Rebublic of Italy.

In 1994, Mandelbaum was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry.

In xxxx, Mandelbaum received the Gold Medal of the City of Florence for his translation of the Divine Comedy in commemoration of the 735th anniversary of Dante's birth.

In 2003, Mandelbaum received an honorary doctor of letters degree from the University of Notre Dame.

The sources of information for this Biographical/Historical Note include Allen Mandelbaum's own papers in the collection at Wake Forest University, including his C.V.'s and biographical notes, as well as articles about him in Contemporary Authors and  Who's Who in America (1995).