Nyu York [New York]: Forverts, 1912. Item #43120

First edition. Original boards, 8vo, 266, 266, 268 pages. 20 cm. In Yiddish. Title translates as “Collected Writings.”
Full set of Morris Rosenfeld’s collected works. Volume 1 contains poetry, Volume 2 and 3 contain stories. Warmly inscribed by Rosenfeld in 1913 to Yiddish actor and director Mark Schweid (1891-1969): “To my dearest friend, actor and poet Mark Shvayd. From Morris Rosenfeld 3. 2nd [i.e. 3 of Feb] 1913.”
“Rosenfeld, known as the ‘Poet Laureate of Labor,’ was a pioneer of Yiddish poetry in the US. Born in Russian Poland, he came to New York by way of London in 1889 and worked as a presser in a sweatshop. His sweatshop songs were often sung by Jewish workers in factories and at mass meetings. Moshe Starkman notes in the EJ that when his Lider-Bukh (‘The Book of Songs,’ 1897) was translated in 1898 by Leo Wiener under the title Songs from the Ghetto, his fame spread to non-Yiddish circles. Starkman also notes that ‘his proletarian poems and national songs stirred the Jewish masses during their early struggles in the New World and at the beginning of the Jewish national renascence’ [sic]. Aaron Kramer notes as well that ‘Of all Yiddish poets, Morris Rosenfeld alone...was acknowledged by the non-Jewish literary world as a notable singer;’ Wiener's translation of Songs from the Ghetto ‘immediately established Rosenfeld's reputation among America's literati.” (EJ, 1971, 14: 285-286; Kramer, trans: The Teardrop Millionaire and Other Poems, 1955).
Mark Shveyd (Schweid) (1891-1969), to whom Rosenfeld inscribed this copy, was a “playwright, poet, translator, and artist, born in Warsaw. His original Jewish given name was Volf-Mortkhe.…in 1911 he graduated from a Polish drama school in Warsaw and went on to act in Yiddish theaters and on the Polish stage as well. In 1911 he emigrated to the United States, performed in New York’s Yiddish theaters, and from 1921 was one of the principal artists in Maurice Schwartz’s Yiddish Art Theater. From 1926 he was also acting on the English-language stage.
He wrote poetry, drama studies, one-act plays, plays, and longer articles on theater. He debuted in print in 1907 with poems in Roman-tsaytung….From 1946 he was an internal contributor to Forverts (Forward) in New York.
Shveyd wrote, adapted, or translated roughly fifty plays” as well as 9 books.
“Shveyd also translated novels from Polish, Russian, German, and English, some of which were published, such as: Israel Zangwill, Troymers fun’m geto (Dreamers of the ghetto), vol. 1 (New York: M. Yankovitsh, 1929), 341 pp.; Stanislaw Przybyszewski, Fun’m obgrund (Out of the depths [original: De Profundis]) (New York, n.d.), 79 pp.; Fyodor Dostoevsky, Erniderigte un baleytigte (Humiliated and insulted [original: Unizhennye i oskorblennye]) (New York: Max Jankovitz, 1920s), 2 vols. Two novels he adapted were published in Warsaw’s Moment” (Yekhezkl Lifshits in Leksikon Fun Der Nayer Yidisher Literatur).
Schweid was director of the Bronx Art Theatre in 1930-1931; a partial collection of his papers is at the Center for Jewish History in New York. SUBJECT(S): Yiddish language. Yiddish poetry. Short stories, Yiddish. OCLC: 3758034
Vol I with inscription has unobtrusive number on spine and old Yiddish institutional stamp at bottom of inscribed endpaper, with gutter taped at contents page. Otherwise a Very Good Condition set with important inscription. (YID-46-36-+-’cc).