Reuben Sachs - A Sketch: With a Biography by Richard Garnett - Softcover

Levy, Amy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1444698923 ISBN 13: 9781444698923

Publisher: Read & Co. Classics, 2021

Synopsis

Amy Judith Levy (1861–1889) was an English poet, novelist, and essayist. She was notably the first Jewish woman to study at Cambridge university, and she became well-known for her feminist positions as well as her romantic relationships with both male and female political and literature figures. First published in 1888, Levy's novel “Reuben Sachs - A Sketch” revolves around Reuben Sachs, who has political aspirations, and his partner Judith Quixano, who lacks money and social status. Set in the Anglo-Jewish community in Bayswater, “Reuben Sachs” is a feminist polemic within which Levy heavily criticises the empty lives led by contemporary women and what she considered to be the romanticised portrayal of Jews by such writers as George Eliot. Other works by this author include: “Xantippe and Other Verse” (1881), “The Romance of a Shop” (1888), and “Miss Meredith” (1889). Read & Co. Classics is proudly republishing this classic novel now in a new edition complete with an introductory biography of the author by Richard Garnett.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Oscar Wilde wrote of this novel, “Its directness, its uncompromising truths, its depth of feeling, and above all, its absence of any single superfluous word, make Reuben Sachs, in some sort, a classic.” Reuben Sachs, the story of an extended Anglo-Jewish family in London, focuses on the relationship between two cousins, Reuben Sachs and Judith Quixano, and the tensions between their Jewish identities and English society. The novel’s complex and sometimes satirical portrait of Anglo-Jewish life, which was in part a reaction to George Eliot’s romanticized view of Victorian Jews in Daniel Deronda, caused controversy on its first publication. This Broadview edition prints for the first time since its initial publication in The Jewish Chronicle Levy's essay "The Jew in Fiction." Other appendices include George Eliot's essay on anti-Jewish sentiment in Victorian England and a chapter from Israel Zangwill's novel The Children of the Ghetto. Also included is a map of Levy's London with landmarks from her biography and from the "Jewish geography" of Reuben Sachs.

About the Author

Susan David Bernstein is a Professor of English, Jewish Studies, and Women s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of Confessional Subjects: Revelations of Gender and Power in Victorian Literature and Culture (University of North Carolina Press, 1997).

Edition details

• Publisher: Read & Co. Classics
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1444698923
• ISBN 13: 9781444698923
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 273