13 Facts About Lionel Abel

Lionel Abel was an eminent Jewish American playwright, essayist and theater critic.

Lionel Abel was a translator, and was an authorized translator of Jean-Paul Sartre, who called Abel the most intelligent man in New York City.

Lionel Abel's first success was a tragedy, Absalom, staged off-Broadway in 1956 and winner of the Obie award.

Lionel Abel is best known for coining the term metatheatre in his book of the same title.

Lionel Abel was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto II.

Lionel Abel's brother, Raziel Abelson was a professor emeritus of philosophy at New York University; he had two sisters.

Lionel Abel graduated from high school at the age of fourteen and moved out of his parents' home when he was fifteen, shortening his name around this time.

Lionel Abel attended St John's University in New York from 1926 to 1928, and then transferred to the University of North Carolina, which he attended from 1928 to 1929.

Lionel Abel is the author of several important translations from the French, including texts by Andre Breton and Guillaume Apollinaire.

Lionel Abel participated in the heated debate that followed the publication of Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem.

Lionel Abel criticized the work in "an outright frontal assault" in an article in the Partisan Review, The subsequent responses and counter-responses occupied several subsequent issues.

Lionel Abel was invited to participate and accepted; Arendt herself did not attend.

Lionel Abel received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1958, a Longview award in 1960, an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1964, and a Rockefeller Foundation grant in 1966.