The rise of American Jewish literature;: An anthology of selections from the major novels

by Charles Angoff (Editor)

988 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Charles Angoff was born in Minsk, Russian Empire (now Belarus), in 1902 and his family left Russia and settled near Boston, Massachusetts, in 1908. By age 12, he began writing poetry. He became a naturalized citizen in 1923.

He studied at Harvard University from 1919 to 1923 on a scholarship and majored in philosophy. In 1923, Angoff began his career in journalism and by 1943, until 1951, he served as managing editor of the American Mercury.

In 1951, he began publishing a series about the Polonskys, a family of assimilating, immigrant Jews. It started with Journey to the Dawn (1951). The trilogy grew to eleven volumes and an unfinished twelfth. He wrote a biography, H. L. Mencken: A Portrait from Memory (1956) and several books of poetry.

In the mid-1950s, Angoff became an English professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University until his retirement in 1967.

In 1954, he received the National Jewish Book Award for In the Morning Light and again in 1969 for Memory of Autumn. Angoff received various other awards (1954-1977).

Source: Wikipedia (shortened)

Reviews

[Patricia Joynton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book reads like a book of short stories. It does give you a flavor of great Jewish writers and an introduction (or reminder) to some of their work. It, however, is not a book you must read straight through, although the benefit of doing so would be that it follows writing by years. It is an easy book to read in pieces over a long period of time.