The first detailed reference and critical guide to Anglo-Jewish writing. It offers accurate and up-to-date information on the lives and accomplishments of its subjects, as well as expert summaries and criticism of their works. Baker and Shumaker eschew theoretical formulations to offer a comprehensive view of many important poets, dramatists, fiction and nonfiction writers, as well as literary critics and other scholars.
Each chapter gives an overview of the similarities and differences of the writers’ Anglo-Jewish experiences and how those experiences influenced them. Writers covered in the first volume include, in the first section, the Victorians and pioneers E. O. Deutsch, B. L. Farjeon, Israel Gollancz, Leonard Merrick, Lazarus Aaronson, and others. The second section covers four critical voices: Vivian de Sola Pinto, Jacob Isaacs, Q. D. Leavis, and David Daiches. In the third, novelists Louis Golding, Alexander Baron, Gerda Charles, and Bernice Rubens. In the fourth, poets such as Karen Gershon, Dannie Abse, Jon Silkin, Ruth Fainlight, Philip Hobsbaum, and A. C. Jacobs. The final section encompasses playwrights and more, including Bernard Kops, Arnold Wesker, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, A. A. Alvarez, and Gabriel Josipovici. The concluding bibliography is divided into a detailed alphabetical enumerative listing of writers’ work followed by a listing of critical works about them. A comprehensive index in volume two draws the volume together.