Maria Polack Explained
Maria Polack (31 January 1787 – 8 January 1849[1]) was an English Jewish novelist and educator. Her father, Ephraim Polack,[2] was a prominent member of the Great Synagogue of London,[3] and her niece (or perhaps daughter), Elizabeth Polack, was the first Jewish woman melodramatist in England.[4]
In 1830 Polack published by subscription the two-volume anti-romance Fiction without Romance, or The Locket Watch, which focuses on the importance of female education and respecting religious and class differences.[5] [6] [7] The novel depicts a gentile family in Devonshire, a member of whom, Eliza Desbro, encounters a sympathetic Jewish family after discovering her status as a bastard.[8] [9] The one-hundred and twenty subscribers to Polack's book included John Braham (two copies), Mrs Nathan Rothschild (five copies), and members of the Goldsmid family (six copies).[10] A second, non-subscriber edition was published two years after the first edition.[11]
Bibliography
Notes and References
- News: Died. The Jewish Chronicle. 12 January 1849. 116 .
- News: A Hundred and One Years Old. The Jewish Chronicle. 1 March 1901. 19 .
- Book: Picciotto, James. Sketches of Anglo-Jewish History. London. Trübner & Co.. 1875. 232. 186884797.
- Book: Weltman, Sharon. "Women Playwrights and the London Stage," in The History of British Women's Writing, 1830–1880. Palgrave Macmillan. 2018. 978-1-137-58465-6. Hartley. Lucy. 204.
- Book: Galchinsky, Michael . The Origin of the Modern Jewish Woman Writer: Romance and Reform in Victorian England . Wayne State University Press . 1996 . 978-0-8143-2613-8 . 100.
- Heidi. Kaufman. 1800-1900: Inside and Outside the Nineteenth-Century East End. BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History. 2016. 14 May 2019.
- News: Books published this day. The Globe. 14 May 1830. 1 .
- Book: Scrivener, Michael . Jewish Representation in British Literature 1780-1840: After Shylock . Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters. Palgrave Macmillan . New York. 2011 . 978-1-349-28741-3 . 951509609. 10.1057/9780230120020. 133.
- Book: Kaufman, Heidi. England's Jewish Renaissance: Maria Polack's Fiction Without Romance (1830) in Context . Spector . Sheila A.. Romanticism/Judaica: A Convergence of Cultures . Ashgate Publishing Company . Farnham, Surrey . 2011 . 978-0-7546-6880-0 . 69–84. https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1317061292.
- David. Conway. John Braham—From Meshorrer to Tenor. Jewish Historical Studies: Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England. 41. London. 2007. Jewish Historical Society of England. 37–61. 29780093.
- News: Just Published. Athenaeum and Literary Chronicle. 21 April 1832. 261.
- News: Advertisements. Athenaeum and Literary Chronicle. 21 April 1832. 262.
