Israel Zangwill Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Israel Zangwill

To characterize Israel Zangwill as an outstanding and prolific writer of short fiction at the end of the nineteenth century is to be accurate but incomplete. Zangwill gained his greatest literary reputation with such novels as Children of the Ghetto (1892) and The Master (1895); his play The Melting Pot (1909; performed, 1908) established a new phrase in American cultural discourse, while another, Merely Mary Ann (1904), brought him his greatest financial success. Early in the twentieth century Zangwill became active in the Zionist movement and was the leading spokesman for English Jewry on the international scene. He was also an active literary and political journalist and, after the turn of the century, a vocal supporter of pacifism and women's rights. Still, the short fiction that Zangwill published in all phases of his career--from the satiric humor of The Bachelors' Club (1891) to the bitter reflectiveness of Dreamers of the Ghetto (1898) to the sentimental artistry of The Grey Wig (1903)--contains his best and most widely remembered work and reflects the preoccupations of the man and his times.

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