| AdminHistory | Israel Zangwill, born London, second child of Moses Zangwill, an itinerant pedlar, glazier, and rabbinical student, and his wife, Ellen Hannah Marks, a Polish Jewish immigrant, 1864; the family moved to Plymouth and then Bristol, then settled in London; educated at the Jews' Free School; BA in French, English, and mental and moral science, University of London, 1884; taught at the Jews' Free School, 1884-1888; columnist for the 'Jewish Standard', 1888-1891; began his writing career with humorous short stories and then moved onto novels and plays; edited the humorous journal 'Ariel, or, The London Puck' and contributed to 'The Idler'; married Edith Chaplin Ayrton, 1903; three children; took an active part in public questions, including women's suffrage and, during World War I, pacifism; supporter of Theodor Herzl from 1895 and a friend of Max Nordau; advocated the plan to resettle Jews in east Africa and abandoned official Zionism after the Seventh Zionist Congress rejected it, 1905; founded the Jewish Territorial Organization, dedicated to the creation of a Jewish territory in some country that need not necessarily be Palestine; promoted the 'Galveston plan' to resettle eastern European Jews in the United States, 1905-1914; temporarily returned to Zionism after the Balfour Declaration, 1917, but became disillusioned by the difficulties encountered by the settlers in Palestine and the opposition of the Arabs and, in his final years, returned to his belief in a territorial solution for the Jewish problem outside Palestine; member of the Maccabans; President, Jewish Historical Society of England; President, Playgoers' Club; President, Jewish Drama League; spent his last years in poor health in East Preston, Sussex; died Midhurst, Sussex, 1926. Publications include: 'The Premier and the Painter' (with Louis Cowen, published under the pseudonym J. Freeman Bell) (1888); 'The Bachelors' Club' (1891); 'The Big Bow Mystery' (1892); 'Children of the Ghetto' (1892); 'The Old Maids' Club' (1892); 'Merely Mary Ann' (1893); 'Ghetto Tragedies' (1893); 'The King of Schnorrers' (1894); 'The Master' (1895); 'Without Prejudice' (1896); 'Dreamers of the Ghetto' (1898); 'The Mantle of Elijah' (1900); 'The Grey Wig' (1903); 'Blind Children' (verse) (1903); 'Ghetto Comedies' (1907); 'The Melting Pot' (1909); 'Italian Fantasies' (essays) (1910); 'The War God' (1911); 'The War for the World' (1916); 'The Principle of Nationalities' (1917); 'Chosen Peoples' (1918); 'Too Much Money' (1918); 'Jinny, the Carrier' (1919); 'The Voice of Jerusalem' (essays) (1920); 'The Cockpit' (1921); 'The Forcing House' (1922); also translated a selection of the poems of Ibn Gabirol (1903) and contributed several verse translations of portions of the liturgy to an edition of the Festival Prayer Book (1904); an anthology, 'Speeches, Articles and Letters' was published in 1937.
Edith Zangwill, born 1875, daughter of the distinguished electrical engineer and physicist William Edward Ayrton and Matilda Charlotte Chaplin Ayrton, one of the first women's medical doctors in Britain; her mother died in 1883 and Edith was brought up by her Jewish stepmother, Phoebe Sarah (Hertha) Marks Ayrton, also a distinguished physicist; attended Bedford College, London University; author of six novels; died 1945. Publications include: 'Barbarous Babe' (1904); 'The First Mrs Mollivar' (1905); 'Teresa' (1909); 'The Rise of a Star' (1918); 'The Call' (1924). |