Hartog, Mrs. Late, Miss Marion Moss [Marion Hartog]

THE PROPHET'S DAUGHTER: A TALE [ASSOCIATION COPY WITH STAMPS FROM THE PUBLISHER, ISAAC LEESER’S, CONGREGATION]

Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1845. Item #42788

1st edition. Original Blue publisher’s cloth, 12mo, iv, 119 pages; 15 cm. Issued as part of the series, “The Jewish Miscellany,” no. 3, from Isaac Leeser's Jewish Publication Society. Singerman 935. Rosenbach 585.
With the bookplate and stamps of Isaac Leeser’s Philadelphia congregation, Mickve Israel, one of the original Jewish congregations in Colonial America, to which Benjamin Franklin famously contributed 5 pounds for synagogue construction. The bookplate announces that the congregation’s Philadelphia Hebrew Sunday School (founded by Rebecca Gratz) has awarded the book to “Annie Britton for Synagogue Attendance” in 1884. Further congregational stamps indicating “School of the Congregation Mickve Israel” mark the blank endpaper opposite the bookplate.
Isaac Leeser, the longtime Rabbi of Congregation Mickve Israel, “ participated in nearly all the early Jewish philanthropic activities in the United States — examples include the first Jewish day schools, the first Jewish seminary, the first Jewish publication society….The Jewish Publication Society he founded [the publisher of this book] became the predecessor of today's Jewish Publication Society of America” (Wikipedia).
Marion Hartog (1821–1907) “and her sister Celia Moss wrote and published their first book of poems, Early Efforts, in 1839, before publishing a collection of historical romances entitled The Romance of Jewish History. This book and its sequel, Tales of Jewish History, are among the first works of fiction ever published by Jewish women anywhere in the world; they promoted reform of English Jews’ gender and religious practices and an early version of political Zionism.
In 1855, Hartog published the first issue of The Jewish Sabbath Journal, the first Jewish women’s periodical in history. Here she published stories about women who become successful independent artists, sermons, and meditations on mother/child and mother/daughter relationships….
In the early 1840s, Marion and Celia Moss moved to London. In 1845, Marion married her French teacher, Alphonse Hartog, and the new couple, together with Celia, opened a boarding school for girls at the home they shared at 68 Mansell Street, Goodman’s Fields. While teaching, the sisters continued writing poetry and tales for the Jewish Chronicle and the American Jewish periodical The Occident.
In July 1854, Marion Hartog brought out a prospectus for a new periodical, The Jewish Sabbath Journal: A Penny and Moral Magazine for the Young, which Hartog described as ‘the dream of more than half my life.’ Victorian Jewish women were expected to oversee the religious and moral education of their children, yet many of them lacked any formal religious training. The Jewish Sabbath Journal sought to alleviate the situation in which (as Hartog put it in her prospectus) most Jewish children ‘receive their education at Christian public schools, or from private Christian teachers.’
Endorsed by no less of an Anglo-Jewish eminence than Abraham Benisch (1814–1878), the editor of the community newspaper, The Jewish Chronicle, the journal was published by subscription, the first number appearing on February 22, 1855. It quickly became popular among Jewish women readers and attracted new female writers in the community. Hartog published stories about women who become successful independent artists. She published sermons—among English Jews at the time an exclusively male genre. She published meditations on mother/child and mother/daughter relationships, and satires on the efforts of conversionists to ensnare Jewish girls.
At first, the journal’s reception seemed positive. The Chief Rabbi of the British Empire Nathan Marcus Adler (1803–1890) approved the project….On March 23, 1855, Benisch…accused Hartog of promoting ‘superstition’ and laying down ‘doctrines which we consider un-Jewish.’ As a result, Hartog’s subscriptions fell off and she closed the journal some five months after its inauguration with a poem ‘On the Death of My Beloved Child’” (Michael Galchinsky in JWA).
No copies appearing at major auction in the last century.
SUBJECT(S): Jews -- Fiction. Juifs -- Romans, nouvelles, etc. Jews. OCLC: 32327499. OCLC and Singerman together list 9 copies worldwide.
Spine label removed, some stains to blank rear endpapers, Good+ Condition, a nice association copy of this rare American early Jewish women’s literary imprint. (AMR-67-65-BDRHH-’xww).

Price: $650.00