History of the Jews.
IN ORIGINAL BINDING
Adams, Hannah. The History of the Jews. From the Destruction of Jerusalem to the Nineteenth Century. In two volumes. Boston: John Eliot, Jun., 1812.
2 vols., 12mo.; heavy foxing to preliminaries; blue paper-covered boards; original title labels affixed to spine; spines foxed; wear to extremities. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition of the first survey of Jewish history published in America. Written by one of the earliest women authors in the United States, this sympathetic chronicle of the Diaspora achieved a measure of popular success both here and in Europe, and later was translated into German. Her accumulated studies relied on contemporary historical and demographic information that had been gathered by correspondence with Jews and non-Jews. (In her Memoirs she gives thankful acknowledgement to Abbé Gregoire, the French Catholic clergyman whose work before and during the French Revolution resulted in the civic emancipation of French Jews in 1791.
It was unusual, this early in the 19th century, for a book to see publication first in America and then in Europe as is the case here. Following its reprintings in England, Germany and France, its far-reaching opinions were credited with stimulating the emigration of foreign Jews to the United States. The work contains a chapter on early Jewish settlements in Jamaica, Surinam and the U.S., including 18th-century reports on the status of Jewish communities in New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, and other cities. This was the first time in Jewish historiography that America was mentioned. It is therefore interesting to consider how the following quote from the Reverend Gershon Seixas might have instilled a great curiosity among European Jews living with civil abuse: “The United States is, perhaps, the only place where the Jews have not suffered persecution, but have on the contrary been encouraged and indulged in every right of citizens.”
(#12559)
Print Inquire