American author and editor whose over-a-dozen books range from Depression Modern: The Thirties Style in America (1975), to The Morning Stars Sang: The Bible in Folk Art (1978), to The World of Tomorrow: The 1939 New York World’s Fair (1988). He edited various chess and acrostic puzzle books in the mid 1990s prior to his death.
The son of Louis and Lillian, Martin Greif was educated at Hunter College, New York City (B.A. cum laude 1959), and Princeton University (M.A. hons. 1961). He worked as an English instructor in New York universities 1962-68, as managing editor of Time Inc. Book Clubs 1969-73, and as co-founder and editorial director at Main Street press from 1974.
Greif said, “My books are on a wide variety of subjects, almost all of them assigned to me by other people. The pleasure I take in writing a book on factory design after completing a book on Victorian Christmases, or a book on the history of homosexuality after completing a book on nineteenth-century farming is a joy in ‘discovery.’ I am never bored because I am always learning something new.” His pseudonyms include Jean Bach, Frederick S. Copely, Leona Wesley Hunter, and Martin Lawrence.
Greif’s 1982 The Gay Book of Days: An Evocatively Illustrated Who’s Who of Who Is, Was, May Have Been, Probably Was, and Almost Certainly Seems to Have Been Gay during the Past 5,000 Years, written under his own name and illustrated by Samuel M. Steward (aka Phil Andros), lists the birthdays of famous gay, lesbian and bisexual people along with their pictures and witty well-documented biographies.
According to his nephew Eric Greif, Martin was “a skeptical bloke” who didn’t believe in “the stars,” however a summary of the characteristics of each astrological Sign appears at the start of each monthly chapter. Openly gay, Greif spent his latter years with his longtime male companion in Ireland. Eric Greif writes that he was “a romantic who loved his partner more dearly than I have known any human to love another.”
He died of an AIDS-related stroke in Cork, Ireland on 17 November 1996.
Link to Wikipedia biography