Grace Aguilar

02 June 1816 - 16 September 1847

GA , author of short stories, novels, and religious writings, was the only Anglo-Jewish woman in the nineteenth century to achieve considerable success as a writer. In addition to writing for gift-books and periodicals, in her lifetime she published a book of poetry, a single novel, a translation, a work on women's Biblical history, and two books of non-fiction on Jewish topics. As many additional volumes appeared posthumously.

Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.

Aguilar, Grace. Macintosh, the Highland Chief. G. Routledge.

Aguilar, Grace. Edmund, the Exiled Prince, and Wallace, the Dauntless Chief. G. Routledge.

Milestones

2 June 1816

GA was born at Hackney in North London.

Abrahams, Beth-Zion. “Grace Aguilar: A Centenary Tribute”. Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, Vol.

, pp. 137-48.

137

Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.

Allibone, S. Austin, editor. A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors Living and Deceased. Gale Research.

1844

GA published The Perez Family, the first domestic narrative of contemporary Jewish life, for Charlotte Montefiore 's Cheap Jewish Library, a series of tracts aimed at poor London Jews.

Sarah Aguilar gives 1843 as the date of publication for The Perez Family. This may refer to a privately circulated edition rather than the one Montefiore published.

Aguilar, Grace. Home Scenes and Heart Studies. D. Appleton and Company.

preface

Galchinsky, Michael. The Origin of the Modern Jewish Woman Writer. Wayne State University Press.

174-5

1844-August 1845

GA 's landmark study The Women of Israel was published in sixteen or eighteen parts costing a shilling each.

The Athenaeum Index of Reviews and Reviewers: 1830-1870. http://replay.web.archive.org/20070714065452/http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~asp/v2/home.html.

Abrahams, Beth-Zion. “Grace Aguilar: A Centenary Tribute”. Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, Vol.

, pp. 137-48.

144

1847

GA 's History of the Jews in England appeared anonymously in Chambers's Miscellany of Useful and Entertaining Tracts, the first such history by an Anglo-Jewish author.

Abrahams, Beth-Zion. “Grace Aguilar: A Centenary Tribute”. Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, Vol.

, pp. 137-48.

145

Crosland, Camilla. Landmarks of a Literary Life, 1820-1892. Charles Scribner’s Sons.

175

British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

16 September 1847

GA died at the age of thirty-one in Frankfurt, Germany, of complications she had suffered following measles and tuberculosis.

Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.

Aguilar, Sarah, and Grace Aguilar. “Memoir of Grace Aguilar”. Home Influence, Hickling, Swan, and Brewer, p. ix - xvii.

xvi

Abrahams, Beth-Zion. “Grace Aguilar: A Centenary Tribute”. Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, Vol.

, pp. 137-48.

146

Hall, Anna Maria, and Frederick William Fairholt. Pilgrimages to English Shrines. Arthur Hall, Virtue.

462

Biography

Birth and Influences

2 June 1816

GA was born at Hackney in North London.

Abrahams, Beth-Zion. “Grace Aguilar: A Centenary Tribute”. Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, Vol.

, pp. 137-48.

137

Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.

Allibone, S. Austin, editor. A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors Living and Deceased. Gale Research.