Francis Steegmuller (July 3, 1906 — October 20, 1994) was an American biographer, translator and fiction writer, who was known chiefly as a Flaubert scholar.
Born in New Haven, Connecticut, he contributed numerous short stories and articles to The New Yorker and also wrote under the pseudonyms of Byron Steel and David Keith. He was the winner of two National Book Awards and of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal. His first wife was Beatrice Stein (d.1961), a painter who was a pupil and friend of Jacques Villon; he married the writer Shirley Hazzard in 1963. His collected papers are held at two universities: at Yale University, the James Jackson Jarves (1818—1888) Papers and the Francis Steegmuller Collection for Jacques Villon; at Columbia University, the Francis Steegmuller Papers 1877—1979.
Sir Francis Bacon: the first modern mind (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1930)
America on Relief (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1938 with Marie Dresden Lane)
Flaubert and Madame Bovary: A Double Portrait (New York: Viking Press, 1939)
Maupassant: A Lion In The Path (New York: Random House, 1949)
The Two Lives of James Jackson Jarves (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951)
The Grand Mademoiselle (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1956)
Apollinaire: Poet Among the Painters (New York: Farrar, Straus & Company, 1963)
Jacques Villon, master printmaker. An exhibition at R.M. Light & Co., Helene C. Seiferheld Gallery inc., New York, February, 1964. (New York: High Grade Press, 1964)
Cocteau: A Biography (Boston: Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1970)
Stories and True Stories (Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1972)
"Your Isadora": The Love Story of Isadora Duncan & Gordon Craig (New York: Random House, 1974)
Catherine McNamara, School days remembered : oral history interview with Francis Steegmuller ( Oral history project. Friends of the Greenwich Library), (Greenwich, CT: Greenwich Library, 1978)
A Woman, A Man, And Two Kingdoms: The Story of Madame d'Épinay and the Abbé Galiani (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1991)
Translations
Gustave Flaubert, The Selected Letters of Gustave Flaubert (The Great Letters Series) (New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1953)
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (New York: Random House for the Book of the Month Club, 1957)
Gustave Flaubert, A Letter from Gustave Flaubert, illustrated by Leonard Baskin (Northampton, MA: Gehenna Press, 1960)
Edward Lear, Le Hibou et la Poussiquette, Edward Lear's The Owl and the Pussycat freely translated into French, illustrated by Barbara Cooney (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1961)
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Selected Essays, translated from the French with Norbert Guterman (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1963)
Eugene Field, Papillot, Clignot et Dodo, Eugene Field's Wynken, Blynken, and Nod freely translated into French with Norbert Guterman, illustrated by Barbara Cooney (New York: Ariel Books, 1964)
"I’m told that when Auden died, they found his Oxford [English Dictionary] all but clawed to pieces. That is the way a poet and his dictionary should come out."
Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Papers in The Museum of Modern Art Archives
Series 1: Correspondence
Folder 1.61 mf 2168:401, Title S 1942, Steegmuller, Francis
Folder 1.303 mf 2183:1292, mf 2184:4, Title Fire Letters 1958, Steegmuller, Francis
William A. Bradley Literary Agency Records, 1909-1982, Harry Ransom Humanities Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Series I. Author Correspondence, 1909-1982, Box 58 Folder 8, Steegmuller, Francis, 1928-1982.
The John Malcolm Brinnin Papers, 1930 - 1981, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library
Series I. Literary and professional correspondence, 1930 - 1982, Box 19 Folder 408, Steegmuller, Francis, 1906- ,
1971 Oct 25 ALS 2p
1972 Jun 22 ACS 1p
Cummings, E.E. (Edward Estlin), 1894-1962. Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138
Series: I. MS Am 1823: Letters to E. E. Cummings, (1261) Steegmuller, Francis, 1906- 3 letters; 1959-1962.
Series: II. MS Am 1823.1: Letters from E. E. Cummings, (353) King, Madeleine, recipient. 1 letter; [1959] Includes letters to Stephen K. Oberbeck, Charlotte B. Howe, Mae Ward and F. Steegmuller
Series: III. MS Am 1823.2: Letters to Marion (Morehouse) Cummings, (241) Steegmuller, Francis, 1906- 1 letter; 1959.
Mina Kirstein Curtiss Papers, 1913-2005, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.
Series III. Correspondence, (1913-85), Box 15 Folder 6, Steegmuller, Francis, 1948-84, n.d.
Levin, Harry, 1912-1994. Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138
Series: I. Correspondence, (939) Steegmuller, Francis, 1906-. Correspondence with Harry Levin, 1954-1987. 3 folders.
Series: III. Other correspondence
B. Letters to Elena Levin, (1226) Steegmuller, Francis, 1906-. Letter to Elena Levin, 1970. 1 folder.
C. Correspondence by others, (1261) Bond, W.H. (William Henry), 1915-. Letters to others, 1966-1978. 1 folder. Includes letters to Francis Steegmuller, The Times Literary Supplement, and Jeremy Treglown.
Jacques Seligmann & Co. Records, 1904-1978 in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
Series 1: Correspondence, 1913-1978; 1.3: General Correspondence, 1913-1978
Francis Steegmuller Letters, Department of Special Collections & University Archives, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa
33 autograph and typescript postcards and letters dating from 1965 to 1978 from Francis Steegmuller to Charles Antin of Viking Press, all relating to Steegmuller's translation of Flaubert's Novembre.
Biographical references
Some of the pages cited below can be read on Google Book Search.
Catherine McNamara, School days remembered: oral history interview with Francis Steegmuller ( Oral history project. Friends of the Greenwich Library), (Greenwich, CT: Greenwich Library, 1978)
Albert Murray, John F. Callahan, eds., Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray (New York: The Modern Library, 2000), pp. 6, 10, 23, 26, 160, 165
Arnold Rampersad, Ralph Ellison: a biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), pp. 172, 212-13, 215, 216, 232, 233, 236-7, 240, 241, 242, 250, 259, 331, 332, 405
Ned Rorem, The Later Diaries 1961—1972 (New York: Da Capo Press, 2000), pp. 196, 277, 319—320, 343
Diana Trilling, The Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Diana and Lionel Trilling (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1993), pp. 83, 122
Alec Wilkinson, My Mentor: A Young Man's Friendship with William Maxwell (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002), pp. 110, 126, 146
