Judah's Lion.
[Judaica] Tonna, Charlotte Elizabeth. Judah’s Lion. New York; John S. Taylor, 1843.
12mo.; cloth.
First American edition of the first English language Zionist Novel – it predates George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda by thirty years. The story concerns the return of an English Jew (Alick) to the Holy Land, and binds together English and Jewish history. This was Tonna’s final novel. Singerman 0833.
Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna (1790-1846) was well known in her time for her novels and her Orange- Protestant essays and poems; she also wrote on the plight of English factory workers, and children’s stories, was a pioneer of deaf education, and was passionate about gardening. In her later years she defended the rights of Judaism, and in her last three years was a close friend of Moses Montefiore, owing to her fundraising on behalf of the Jews of Mogador in 1844 (she raised record funds for the Jewish community in the besieged Moroccan coastal city), her public protest against the policies of Tsar Nicholas I towards Jews, and her 1844 letter to the Bishop of Jerusalem, entitled ‘Israel’s Ordinances.’ “As Tonna’s health deteriorated rapidly, the Montefiores became devoted friends. When she set out on her final journey to Ramsgate from London, it was Montefiore who bade her farewell at the train station and handed her a basket of grapes.” (Pg. 215; ‘Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero’; by Abigail Green). Her work, “Days of Old,’ by Charlotte Elizabeth (Mrs. Tonner)” was part of the sixth volume published by the American Jewish Publication Society in 1847 (Jewish Miscellany no. VI; which also includes two works by Isaac Leeser, “Rachel Levi, A Tale” and “The Jews and Their Religion”), two years after the society was founded by Isaac Leeser (EJ 1906; American Jewish Publication Society).
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