Philip Freund; novelist, playwright, theater historian

[Hyfler/Rosner]

FREUND--Philip, author and educator, Fordham University
Professor Emeritus, died on December 20 at 98, after a short
illness. He was born in Vancouver, Canada. He sent
prize-winning stories and poems to the Detroit News before
he was ten, began college at 16 and almost immediately began
to write for the Cornell University literary magazine of
which he became editor. While pursuing his long academic
career, initially at Cornell, from which he graduated in
1929 and Fordham University where he taught courses in
creative writing, film, and entertainment and the arts, he
published eight novels, thirteen plays, nine short-story
collections, as well as poetry, essays, literary criticism,
and other nonfiction. The last thirty years of his long life
were devoted to researching and writing a massive history of
the theater, "Stage by Stage," published in four volumes the
last of which will be available in 2008. The series has been
reviewed as one of the most important studies of theater in
the 20th century. Amazingly, he was fully productive up to
the last few weeks of a life that spanned nearly a century.
Philip Freund was a polymath and wide-ranging cosmopolitan
but mainly a consummate human being. His many friends will
miss his dry wit and his erudite, wise and always gracious
counsel.

Published in the New York Times from 1/5/2008 - 1/6/2008.