Daniel Pratt Mannix IV; Author of ‘The Fox and the Hound’

Daniel Pratt Mannix IV, 85, author of 25 books, including “The Fox and the Hound.” The Disney animated feature of that name, produced in 1981, was based on Mannix’s book about the friendship of two natural enemies. Mannix also wrote about a circus in “Step Right Up,” which was republished under the title “Memoirs of a Sword Swallower” and serialized on the BBC. He gathered and edited the diaries of his admiral father, Daniel Pratt Mannix III, and published them in 1984 as “The Old Navy.” Born in Bryn Mawr, Pa., Mannix was educated at the U.S. Naval Academy and the University of Pennsylvania and served in the Navy during World War II. He began to write as a teenager and had several articles published in magazines. Mannix liked to experience what he wrote about. For the circus book, he joined a sideshow and became a professional sword swallower and fire eater. To write about hunting, he hunted boar in the Netherlands, tigers in India and other wild game in Africa. An expert on falconry and eagles, Mannix once lived in Mexico to train eagles to hunt iguanas and made a movie short about the experience, “Eagle vs. Dragon.” On Wednesday in Malvern, Pa.