Manuel Komroff

Manuel Komroff (September 7, 1890 – 10 December 1974) was an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, editor and translator. He was born in New York where he began his working life as a journalist. He also spent some time in Russia during the Russian Revolution.

Manuel Komroff. Photo by Carl Van Vechten.

Marco Polo

One of his most successful publications was his edited version of The Travels of Marco Polo, first published in 1926.^[1] He not only added a chapter which was missing in the William Marsden translation, but also revised parts of the Henry Yule editions.^[2]

Works

Novels

• The Grace of Lambs (1925, Boni & Liveright)
• Juggler's Kiss (1927, Boni & Liveright)
• Coronet (1930, Coward-McCann)
• Two Thieves (1931, Coward-McCann)
• I, the Tiger (1933, Coward-McCann)
• The March of the Hundred (1939, Coward-McCann)
• The Christmas Letter (1941 American Artists Group, N.Y.)
• In the Years of Our Lord (1942, Harper & Bros.)
• Echo of Evil (1948, Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Disraeli (1963, Julian Messner)
• Talleyrand (1965, Julian Messner)

Non-fiction

• Contemporaries of Marco Polo (1928, Boni & Liveright)
• The Magic Bow: A Romance of Paganini (1940, Harper & Bros.)
• Big City, Little Boy (1953, A. A. Wyn)
• Napoleon (1954, J. Messner))
• Mozart (1956, Alfred A. Knopf)
• Beethoven and the World of Music (1962, Dodd, Mead & Co.)

Portrait

There is a large 48x31" portrait of a 24-year-old, foppish Komroff, dated 1914, by Leon Kroll in the Portland Museum of Art ( Maine). Komroff is standing indoors, 3/4 view (to the knees), dressed to go outside. He is holding a large portfolio of papers in his right hand.