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In its first appearance in 1892, Israel Zangwill’s
Children of the Ghetto
created a sensation in both England and America, becoming the first Anglo-Jewish bestseller and establishing Zangwill as the literary voice of Anglo-Jewry. A novel set in late-19th-century London,
Children of the Ghetto
gave an inside look into an immigrant community that was almost as mysterious to the more established middle-class Jews of Britain as to the non-Jewish population, providing an analysis of a generation caught between the ghetto and modern British life.
Children of the Ghetto
remains a landmark work of modern Jewish fiction as well as an essential late Victorian text. As the first Jewish East End novel, the book ignited an important 20th-century genre. In a period that saw the development of the working-class novel and the novel of spiritual malaise,
Children of the Ghetto
encompassed both. The novel conveys details of life in the ghetto and explores a spiritual crisis among young Jews at a time when a questioning of beliefs appeared in Christian novels as well. Zangwill’s realistic portrayal intrigued middle-class Jews and elicited nostalgia in those who started out in the East End. Although a novel about British Jews,
Children of the Ghetto
also found success in the US as the first work of fiction published by the Jewish Publication Society of America. This volume brings back to print the 1895 edition of
Children of the Ghetto , the latest American version known to have been corrected by the author. Meri-Jane Rochelson places the novel in proper context by providing a biographical, historical and critical introduction; a bibliography of primary and secondary sources, and notes on the text, making this accessible to both Jewish and non-Jewish readers.
