Sir Israel Gollancz was a distinguished teacher, editor, and collector of manuscripts and incunabula. Although in his lifetime he was known to the public chiefly as a William Shakespeare scholar, owing to his editorship of The Temple Shakespeare (1894- 1896), posterity remembers him for his editions of Middle English works, including his facsimile of British Museum MS. Cotton Nero A.x., the manuscript of the important Middle English poems Pearl, Patience, Cleanness, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1923). Several of his editions were revised and republished during his lifetime, and many have been reprinted subsequently.

Gollancz was born in London on 13 July 1864, the fourth and youngest son among the seven children of Samuel Marcus Gollancz, rabbi of the Hambro Synagogue, and Johanna Gollancz, née Koppel. The eldest son, Hermann, became Goldsmid Professor of Hebrew at University College, London. Hermann was also a rabbi and collected Hebrew...