From Plotzk to Boston.
Antin, Mary. From Plotzk to Boston. With a Foreword by Israel Zangwill. Boston: W.B. Clarke & Co., 1899.
8vo.; wrappers, extremities lightly chipped and darkened; a pretty copy of a fragile item. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition of Antin’s first book, a record of her voyage from her native Plotzk, White Russia, to America. Antin (1881-1949) spent her childhood in a small town in the pale. After coming to America, Antin migrated to Massachusetts and attended the Girls’ Latin School of Boston and, later, New York’s Teachers’ College of Columbia University.
Incredibly, From Plotzk to Boston, Antin’s literary debut, was written when the author was only eleven years old: “...it was at that age that she first wrote the thing in Yiddish, though she was thirteen when she translated it into English” (Foreward, by Israel Zangwell, p. 7). Antin’s story bravely articulates the Jewish immigrant experience, “for, despite the great wave of Russian immigration into the United States, and despite the noble spirit in which the Jews of America have grappled with the invasion, we still know too little of the feelings of the people themselves...” (ibid). Thirteen years later Antin would publish the work for which she would be remembered, her autobiography entitled The Promised Land (UJE, Vol. I, p. 337).
(#4598)
Print Inquire
