Aguilar, Grace.

RECORDS OF ISRAEL. [ASSOCIATION COPY BELONGING TO EXTENDED FAMILY OF AUTHOR'S PATRON IN THE US, A FAMILY FIGHTING FOR THE JEWISH RIGHTS ADVOCATED IN THE BOOK; OWNERS INCLUDE SOLOMON ETTING, THE FIRST KOSHER BUTCHER IN AMERICA]

London: J. Mortimer, 1844. Item #42764

First edition of author’s first work of fiction. Original (publisher’s?) blindstamped cloth, gilt spine, 12mo, xi, 139 + [4] pages of ads for other works by Aguliar at the rear.
Aguilar’s first work of fiction, this copy owned by the family of Rebecca Gratz, Aguilar’s early promoter and admirer, including by Gratz relative Solomon Etting, the first Shochet (Kosher butcher) in America and War of 1812 patriot and, like Aguilar, an early advocate for Jewish rights. With a gift inscription above the title on the title page, noting, “Mrs. Ellen H. Etting to Solomon Etting.” Another hand in another ink has written below “Josephine Etting” (1830-1914) the grandniece of Rebecca Gratz.This copy also bears the later donation bookplate of Laura Mordecai to Gratz College, an institution founded by members of the Gratz family; the Etting, Gratz, and Mordecai families were all related through marriage.
To get a sense of the Etting Family, see the overview of the Etting Family papers at the American Jewish Historical Society (https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/3/resources/6103).
Solomon Etting (1764-1847), one owner of the book, was a "businessman, political figure, and Jewish civic rights leader [who] became a shohet at the age of 18, the first American Jew to serve in this capacity” (EJ, 2007).
“By the 1840s, [Rebecca] Gratz happily noted that Jewish women were ‘becoming quite literary.’ She touted books by British educator Grace Aguilar, who extolled Judaism and argued its importance to women, and used Aguilar’s books in the HSS [Hebrew Sunday School]. Gratz hoped the school would demonstrate that Jewish women equaled Christian women in religious piety, then considered a mark of civility” (Jewish Women’s Archive. See, for example, Gratz’s letter to Aguilar at (https://rebeccagratz.digitalcollections.gratzcollege.edu/item/rgc0084/), held at Gratz college, a prior owner of this book).
“When she died in 1847 at the age of thirty-one, Grace Aguilar enjoyed a reputation as a poet, historical romance writer, domestic novelist, Jewish emancipator, religious reformer, educator, social historian, theologian, and liturgist. A Jewish woman in Victorian England, Aguilar produced a body of work that appealed to both Jews and Christians, women and men, religious traditionalists and reformers.
Distributed throughout the British Empire, Europe, and the United States, her books—which record the ambivalent encounter of a British minority with the majority culture—were translated into French, German, and Hebrew. She developed new and hybrid literary genres, helped to build the Anglo-Jewish subculture, advocated Jews’ emancipation in the Victorian world, and insisted on women’s emancipation in the Jewish world” (Michael Galchinsky).
See a contemporary Jewish review of this work in Isaac Leeser's Occident at http://www.jewish-history.com/occident/volume2/jul1844/literary.html
The first female Anglo-Jewish writers—”including Grace Aguilar, the first bestselling Anglo-Jewish author—were motivated to publish positive depictions of Jews in response to antisemitism and Christian conversionist campaigns….
Grace Aguilar, known in her time as a poet, historical romance writer, domestic novelist, Jewish emancipator, religious reformer, educator, social historian, theologian and liturgist.
The romance and domestic fiction of the novelist, poet, and devotional writer Grace Aguilar remained popular among Victorian readers throughout the century, although most of her literary successes were posthumous. Aguilar’s work included fiction and poetry for the general woman reader as well as works specifically addressing a Jewish audience and Jewish questions. She was also a prolific poet, publishing in Anglo-Jewish periodicals as well as in the American Jewish journal The Occident….
Of Sephardic descent, Aguilar published her first fictional work, Records of Israel (1844), on the subject of Iberian Jews devastated by enforced exile from their beloved motherland. In her teens, she had written her first romance on this theme, The Vale of Cedars; or The Martyr, a story of the heroic suffering of a crypto-Jewish woman in Inquisition Spain, which was published only in 1850, after her death….Aguilar’s work was published during the time that Jews were campaigning for political emancipation and her fiction can be seen as part of the effort to portray Jews as loyal Englishmen and women worthy of equal civil rights” (Nadia Valman in Jewish Women’s Archive).Galchinsky (1997) notes that in her short life, Aguilar became one of the most prolific women writers, and “the most prominent spokesperson for English Jews” in Victorian London. Several of her publications sold as many as Dickens’ and were still republished many years after her death.
Her History of the Jews in England (1847) published anonymously was the first such history published by an Anglo-Jewish author….Her essays on Judaism and the education of women granted her international recognition to the point that the Aguilar branch of the New York Public Library in East Harlem is named after her. Aguilar advocated for a new form of Anglo-Jewish practice or Liberal Judaism and was a leading force in the establishment of Jewish women’s institutions and literary communities. Her death at the age of 31 was mourned by Christians and Jews and tributes appeared in the press in London and Philadelphia….
Grace’s father, Emanuel Aguilar (1787-1845)....served as the ‘Parnas’ or lay leader at the Bevis Marks synagogue” and British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, born a Sephardic Jew himself, “helped her to find a publisher in England, while Isaac Leeser, editor of the American Jewish periodical The Occident in Philadelphia, agreed to publish some of her poems….
Grace Aguilar’s work as a writer and as an educator was celebrated by contemporary Jewish women who admired the fact that it fell upon a woman to be ‘the public advocate of the faith of Israel’ (Lask Abrahams 1951). She fostered literary and philanthropic associations and contributed to other women’s projects such as Charlotte Montefiore’s Cheap Jewish Library and Abigail Lindo’s lexicographical work. She was the inspiration for Marion Hartog's Jewish Sabbath Journal (1855), the first Jewish women's periodical published in modern times: (East End Women’s Museum).
For more on Aguilar see:
Galchinsky, M., 1997. Modern Jewish Women’s dilemmas: Gace Aguilar’s Bargains. Literature and Theology. Vol 11, n. 1, March 1997.
Jewish Virtual Library. Grace Aguilar, 1816-1847.https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/grace-aguilar
Lask Abrahams, B., 1951. Grace Aguilar: A Centenary Tribute. Transactions (Jewish Historical Society of England), 1945-1951, Vol. 16 (1945-1951), pp. 137-148. Jewish Historical Society of England: http://www.jstor.com/stable/2977786
Solomon Etting “became a banker, a shipper, a founder of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and an important businessman. He was prominent in the Baltimore Republican Society, a Jeffersonian political club. He was a leader in the defense of Baltimore against the British in the War of 1812, during which his 18-year-old son Samuel was wounded in the battle at nearby Fort McHenry.
Etting was a ‘manager’ of the Maryland State Colonization Society, which sought to promote the resettlement of blacks [sic] in Africa. Etting was active in the Baltimore German Society and served as its vice president from 1820 to 1840….In 1801 he purchased land for a Jewish cemetery in Baltimore.
He also led in the struggle for Jewish civic rights, opposing the Maryland law requiring of officeholders a Christian oath. As early as 1797 he appealed to the State Legislature on behalf of a ‘sect of people called Jews, deprived of invaluable rights of citizenship and praying to be placed on the same footing as other good citizens.’ This petition initiated a three-decade struggle, which ended successfully in 1826. Soon thereafter, Etting served as a Baltimore councilman. Solomon Etting's second wife was the daughter of the prominent leader Barnard Gratz" (EJ, 2007).
One ad at rear notes that publishers are "preparing for publication" her work "Women of Israel," which did in fact appear a year later, in 1845.
OCLC: 776247144. OCLC lists only one institution with holdings of the first edition of 1844 (the British Library) Ex-library (Gratz College) with usual markings. Spine cocked with wear, Good Condition. An exceedingly rare first edition of Jewish women’s fiction with important Baltimore Jewish association. (AMR-67-64-'xww+).

Price: $3,500.00