Born in Vulcan, Romania (Transylvania), Wolf was originally named 'Ludovic', which was changed upon his arrival in the United States in 1930 with his mother, Rose-ita, older brother, Maxim (Mel) and younger sister, Shirly. He wrote and published numerous poems, short stories, book reviews and articles, and was part of the Berkeley Renaissance of the late 1940s and 1950s. He was a professor of English at San Francisco State University (SFSU) until moving to New York around 1980, focussing on teaching poetry. He is the author of several books including "A Dream of Dracula", "Blood Thirst", "100 Years of Vampire Fiction" (editor), "Bluebeard : The Life and Crimes of Gilles De Rais", "Doubles, Dummies and Dolls : Twenty-One Terror Tales of Replication" (editor), "Dracula : the Connoisseur's Guide", "False Messiah", "Horror - A Connoisseur's Guide To Literature And Film", "Monsters: Twenty Terrible and Wonderful Beasts From The Classic Dragon And Colossal Minotaur To King Kong And The Great Godzilla", "Quiromancia/ Chiromancy", "The False Messiah", "Voices from the love generation" (Little, Brown, 1968), "The Glass Mountain: A Novel" (Overlook Press, 1993), "The Passion of Israel" Leonard Wolf. Interviews Taken and Edited in Collaboration with Deborah Wolf, "Wolf's Complete Book of Terror" (editor), and "Vini-Der-Pu: A Yiddish version of Winnie the Pooh" (Dutton 2000).