Israel Zangwill

Israel Zangwill (1864-1926), English writer, born in London of Russian parents, and educated at the Jews' Free School in London. He established a reputation as a novelist in 1892, with Children of the Ghetto, which concerned life among poor London Jews. This work was followed by Ghetto Tragedies (1893), The King of Schnorrers (1894), Ghetto Comedies (1907), and other novels about Jewish life, as well as by stories, plays, essays, and poems. His best-known play is The Melting Pot (1908). Other plays include Plaster Saints (1914) and We Moderns (1924). He is especially noted for portraying modern Jewish life with sympathy and humor, neither stereotyping nor idealizing it. Zangwill was an early leader of modern Zionism. In 1905 he founded the Jewish Territorial Organization, which sought unsuccessfully for land where Jews might be able to make an autonomous settlement.