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]
Maria Polack | |
|---|---|
| Born | 31 January 1787 |
| Died | 8 January 1849 (aged 61) Whitechapel |
| Occupation | Teacher of music and poetry |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Notable works | Fiction without Romance (1830) |
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
edit- Polack, Maria (1830). Fiction Without Romance; or The Locket-Watch. London: Effingham Wilson.
- Polack, Maria (1832) Fiction Without Romance; or The Locket-Watch. London: A. K. Newman & Co.[12]
References
edit- ^ "Died". The Jewish Chronicle. 12 January 1849. p. 116.
- ^ "A Hundred and One Years Old". The Jewish Chronicle. 1 March 1901. p. 19.
- ^ Picciotto, James (1875). Sketches of Anglo-Jewish History. London: Trübner & Co. p. 232. OCLC 186884797.
- ^ Weltman, Sharon (2018). Hartley, Lucy (ed.). "Women Playwrights and the London Stage," in The History of British Women's Writing, 1830–1880. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 204. ISBN 978-1-137-58465-6.
- ^ Galchinsky, Michael (1996). The Origin of the Modern Jewish Woman Writer: Romance and Reform in Victorian England. Wayne State University Press. p. 100. ISBN 978-0-8143-2613-8.
- ^ Kaufman, Heidi (2016). "1800-1900: Inside and Outside the Nineteenth-Century East End". BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History. Retrieved 14 May 2019.
- ^ "Books published this day". The Globe. 14 May 1830. p. 1.
- ^ Scrivener, Michael (2011). Jewish Representation in British Literature 1780-1840: After Shylock. Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 133. doi:10.1057/9780230120020. ISBN 978-1-349-28741-3. OCLC 951509609.
- ^ Kaufman, Heidi (2011). "England's Jewish Renaissance: Maria Polack's Fiction Without Romance (1830) in Context". In Spector, Sheila A. (ed.). Romanticism/Judaica: A Convergence of Cultures. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Company. pp. 69–84. ISBN 978-0-7546-6880-0.
- ^ Conway, David (2007). "John Braham—From Meshorrer to Tenor". Jewish Historical Studies: Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England. 41. London: Jewish Historical Society of England: 37–61. JSTOR 29780093.
- ^ "Just Published". Athenaeum and Literary Chronicle. 21 April 1832. p. 261.
- ^ "Advertisements". Athenaeum and Literary Chronicle. 21 April 1832. p. 262.