Victorian Jews Through British Eyes (The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization) - Hardcover

Cowen, Anne; Cowen, Roger

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0197100422 ISBN 13: 9780197100424

Publisher: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in association with Liverpool University Press, 1986

Synopsis

The authors have selected nearly 150 illustrations, with commentary, from Victorian illustrated magazines such as 'The Illustrated London News', 'Punch', and 'The Graphic', to show how Jewish subjects were presented to Victorian readers. This material, unique because it was produced mainly from eye-witness accounts, also provides a new source to illustrate the social history of Victorian Jews, especially in Britain. The British image of the Jew is shown to progress during this period from a collection of stereotypes - the financier, the pedlar and old clothes-man, the rather shady ancillary of the machinery of the law - to a more accurate representation of a Victorian bourgeois with distinctive religious practices and traditions; and then again to stereotypes produced by concentration on an 'Aliens Question'. Introductory essays by Roger Cowen and V. D. Lipman respectively, describe the Victorian illustrated magazines as sources of material and the Jewish background in nineteenth-century Britain.

About this title

About the Authors

Anne Cowen was educated at University College London and at the City University Business School. She was Senior Lecturer in Economics and Industrial Relations at the Polytechnic of Central London. She has also undertaken economic research and business consultancy work, and is currently involved in running a small business. She has lectured widely on ‘Victorian Jews through British eyes’ and related themes, including at the Museum of London and Jewish Book Week, and on BBC radio. She is involved in a wide range of communal educational and charitable work, and is a Trustee of the New London Synagogue.

The late Roger Cowen was educated at the University of Manchester and received an MBA from Columbia University Business School. He pursued a very creative and successful business career, and had a wide range of interests in the arts and communal activities. He died in 1986.

A keen photographer, Roger Cowen, with Anne Cowen, visited many small provincial synagogues in the United Kingdom and researched their histories. Their visits to antiques shops and bookshops proved a pleasurable activity and yielded much of the material used in this book.

Edition details

• Publisher: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in association with Liverpool University Press
• Publication date: 1986
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0197100422
• ISBN 13: 9780197100424
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 244