In its first appearance in 1892, Israel Zangwill's 'Children of the Ghetto' created a sensation in both England and America, becoming the first Anglo-Jewish bestseller and establishing Zangwill as the literary voice of Anglo-Jewry. A novel set in late-19th-century London, 'Children of the Ghetto' gave an inside look into an immigrant community that was almost as mysterious to the more established middle-class Jews of Britain as to the non-Jewish population, providing an analysis of a generation caught between the ghetto and modern British life. 'Children of the Ghetto' remains a landmark work of modern Jewish fiction as well as an essential late Victorian text. As the first Jewish East End novel, the book ignited an important 20th-century genre. In a period that saw the development of the...