Israel Zangwill: A Study. Maurice Wohlgelernter

Of course this is not so much a book about London, as it is a biography of a London-based writer. But given Zangwill's importance in chronicling life in the late-Victorian Jewish ghetto Wohlgelernter's 1964 biography Israel Zangwill: A Study deserves our attention.

I actually picked up a first edition of this book at the Ivory Ape, an antiquarian bookshop in the centre of Brussels.


This was the first full-length study of Zangwill's works, and probably remains the definitive source for students and fans alike. The beauty of the book lies in the authors understanding of Zangwill's affinity with his subjects. Zangwill, for all his brilliance, was a true child of the ghetto, and was neither able nor desirous of leaving behind the people amongst who was born in the Whitechapel slums.

Maurice Wohlgelernter, Israel Zangwill: A Study, Columbia University Press (1964).