Frederick Karl is the author of several books: biographies of Joseph Conrad, William Faulkner, Franz Kafka, and George Eliot; as well as several volumes of literary criticism, among them American Fictions: 1940-1980, A Comprehensive History and Critical Evaluation (HarperCollins, 1983) and American Fictions: 1980-2000, Whose America Is It Anyway? (Xlibris Corporation, 2001).  Much of his work on the biographies has been compiled in his Etruscan book, Art Into Life: The Craft of Literary Biography (2005). He was also general editor and volume co-editor of the Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad (Cambridge University Press), five volumes of which have appeared. He taught at City College of New York, Columbia, and NYU.