Frederick F. Manfred Papers

Frederick Manfred was born Frederick Feikema on January 6, 1912 on a farm in northwestern Iowa. He attended high school in Hull, Iowa where he excelled as a baseball pitcher and dreamed of becoming a professional player. Two years after graduating from high school, he attended the Calvin College in Grand Rapids Michigan where began his writing career.

After earning a B.A. and his teaching certificate in 1934, Manfred hitchhiked across America for two years. In 1937, at the end of his travels, he worked as a sports reporter for The Minneapolis Journal for several years. Manfred soon developed tuberculosis and entered Glen Lake Sanatorium where he met his future wife Maryanna Shorba. Manfred left the sanatorium in 1942 and worked on the staff of Modern Medicine and as assistant campaign manager for Hubert Humphrey, who was a candidate for mayor of Minneapolis.

In 1943 Manfred decided to devote all of his time to writing. He was given a University of Minnesota writing fellowship in 1944, and his first novel, The Golden Bowl, inspired by his hitchhiking experience, was published later that year. Manfred's third novel, This Is the Year (1947), was on The New York Times best-seller list for four weeks

In 1952 Manfred decided to changed his name from Frederick Feikema to Frederick Feikema Manfred, and Frederick Manfred became his publishing name. Lord Grizzly, the first of "The Buckskin Man Tales," was the first work Manfred published under his new name. He published numerous other novels in the series. Manfred died of a brain tumor in 1994.