Emily Marion Harris

Emily Marion Harris (7 June 1844 – 5 December 1900) was an English novelist, poet, and social worker. Many of her writings explored Jewish life in London, and the religious and political conflicts of Jewish traditionalists in the face of increasing assimilation.[2][3]

Emily Marion Harris
Born(1844-06-07)7 June 1844
London, United Kingdom
Died5 December 1900(1900-12-05) (aged 56)[1]
London, United Kingdom
Resting placeWillesden Jewish Cemetery, London Borough of Brent
Pen nameE. M. H., Estelle
Occupation
  • Novelist
  • poet
  • social worker
LanguageEnglish
Genre
Notable worksEstelle (1878)
Benedictus (1887)
Signature

Biography

Emily Marion Harris was born in London to Jewish parents Sarah (née Barnett) and Aaron Lascelles Harris.[4] Sarah, a teacher, was active in charitable organisations for the Jewish poor of East London.[4] Harris' maternal grandmother, Leah Barnett, was governess of the girls' section of the Jews' Free School,[5] while her paternal aunt, Miriam Harris, was headmistress of the School's preparatory nursery.[4]

From 1887, Harris led the West Central Jewish Girls' Club in Soho, co-founded with Lily Montagu under the patronage of Lady Charlotte de Rothschild and Constance Rothschild, Lady Battersea.[6][7] The Club aimed to provide evening continuation classes, recreation, and social interaction opportunities for working women living in the West Central district.[8] It had developed from a Sabbath school for poor Jewish girls that Harris, her sisters, and her mother held at their family home.[2][9]

Harris maintained a friendship and correspondence with Robert Browning,[10][11] to whom she had been introduced by Eliza FitzGerald in 1883.[3] He was known to consult her on Hebraic and Jewish matters.[3]

She died in 1900 at her home at Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury,[12] after an attack of pneumonia lasting a few days.[13] Her funeral service was conducted by hazzan Marcus Hast of the Orthodox Great Synagogue, with a eulogy by Reform rabbi Morris Joseph.[2][14] The Emily Harris Home for Jewish Working Girls, which provided meals and lodging for working class Jewish women, was named in her memory.[15]

Work

Harris' best-known novels,[4] Estelle (1878)—initially published anonymously[16]—and its sequel Benedictus (1887), advocated for orthodoxy in the face of increasing assimilation.[17] In Estelle, the titular protagonist is an aspiring Jewish artist who, amid struggles with religious orthodoxy and female autonomy,[2] chooses a life of spinsterhood instead of taking a Christian lover.[18][19] The novel was rated "highly" by the Athenaeum, and praised as "a thoroughly picturesque story of Jewish life" and "recommended as pleasant reading for persons of any creed" by the Court Journal.[20]

She published The Narrative of the Holy Bible, a book of Bible stories originally written for the children of Leopold de Rothschild, in 1889.[21] Her final publication was the children's book Rosalind (1895), a story of a girl who, after an illness, spends some time convalescing in Hampton Court Palace, and meets in one of the houses with three parrots, who tell her the tale of their lives.[22]

A sermon on "Woman—Then and Now" given by Harris at the Bayswater Synagogue in 1899 was published by Hermann Gollancz in 1909,[23] and an obituary poem written on the death of the Baroness de Rothschild was published in The Standard Book of Jewish Verse in 1917.[24]

Publications
  • Amy and Rosalie: A Mother's Memorials of Two Beloved Children. London. 1854.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) Revised as Two Little Sisters in 1863.[25]
  • Four Messengers. London: Bell and Daldy. 1870.
  • Echoes. London: Bell and Daldy. 1872.
  • Twilight and Dawn. London: Bell and Daldy. 1873.
  • Clemène: A Sketch. London: George Bell and Sons. 1874.
  • Mercer's Gardens. London: George Bell and Sons. 1876.
  • Estelle. Vol. I–II. London: George Bell and Sons. 1878. {{cite book}}: External link in |volume= (help)
  • Friends Only. London: Marcus Ward & Co. 1879.
  • Within a Circle. London: Marcus Ward & Co. 1880.
  • Verses. London: George Bell and Sons. 1881.
  • The Lieutenant: A Story of the Tower. London: George Bell and Sons. 1882.
  • Benedictus. Vol. I–II. London: George Bell and Sons. 1887. {{cite book}}: External link in |volume= (help)
  • The Narrative of the Holy Bible. London: Trübner & Co. 1889.
  • Lady Dobbs: A Novel. London: Kegan Paul. 1890.
  • Apples of Eden: A Realism. London: George Routledge and Sons. 1890.
  • Rosalind: The Story of Three Parrots. London: George Redway. 1895.

References
  1. "Wills and Administrations (Haarhoff-Jutsum)", Calendar of the Grants of Probate and Letters of Administration made in the Probate Registries of the High Court of Justice in England, London: Principal Probate Registry, p. 59, 1901.
  2. Valman, Nadia (2007). The Jewess in Nineteenth-Century British Literary Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 160–172, 238. ISBN 978-0-521-86306-3.
  3. Cheskin, Arnold (Fall 1982). "Robert Browning's Climactic Hebraic Connections With Emma Lazarus and Emily Harris". Studies in Browning and His Circle. 10 (2): 9–22. JSTOR 45285113.
  4. Rubinstein, William D.; Jolles, Michael A.; Rubinstein, Hillary L., eds. (2011). "Harris, Emily Marion". The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History. London: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 397. ISBN 978-0-230-30466-6. OCLC 793104984.
  5. Black, Gerry (1998). JFS: The History of the Jews' Free School, London, since 1732. London: Tymsder Publishing. p. 39. ISBN 978-0-9531104-0-7.
  6. Spence, Jean (2004). "Working for Jewish Girls: Lily Montagu, Girls' Clubs and Industrial Reform, 1890–1914". Women's History Review. 13 (3): 501. doi:10.1080/09612020400200396. S2CID 142996838.
  7. Dwor, Richa (2018). "Lily Montagu and Liberal Judaism". In Guy, Josephine M. (ed.). Edinburgh Companion to Fin-de-Siècle Literature, Culture and the Arts. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. p. 353. ISBN 978-1-4744-0892-9.
  8. Harris, Isidore, ed. (1900). "The Jewish Year Book. An Annual Record of Matters Jewish". 5. London: Greenberg & Co.: 97–98. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  9. Montagu, Lily H. (1954). My Club and I: The Story of the West Central Jewish Club. London: Neville Spearman and Herbert Joseph.
  10. Crowder, Ashby Bland (1986). "Browning and Women". Studies in Browning and His Circle. 14: 108. JSTOR 45285206.
  11. King, Roma A., Jr. (1947). Armstrong, A. J. (ed.). Robert Browning's Finances from His Own Account Book. Baylor University Browning Interests. Vol. 15. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press. pp. 34–35.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  12. Reilly, Catherine W. (1994). Late Victorian Poetry, 1880-1899: An Annotated Biobibliography. London: Mansell. p. 211. ISBN 978-0-7201-2001-1.
  13. "Miss Emily Marion Harris". Clifton Society. Bristol. 13 December 1900. p. 6.
  14. "The Death of Miss Emily M. Harris". The Jewish Chronicle. London. 14 December 1900. pp. 14–15.
  15. Black, Eugene C. (1988). The Social Politics of Anglo-Jewry, 1880–1920. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. p. 139. ISBN 978-0-631-16491-3.
  16. Boase, Frederic (1965). Modern English Biography (Supplement to Volume II). Vol. V (2nd ed.). Frank Cass & Co. p. 586.
  17. Binik, Helen (1989). "Appropriating the Convention: Victorian Anglo-Jewish Response to the Literary Stereotype of the Jew". Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies. Jerusalem. C (2): 50. ISSN 0333-9068. JSTOR 23533497.
  18. Sutherland, John (1989). The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford: Stanford University Press. pp. 280–281. ISBN 978-0-8047-1528-7.
  19. Sutherland, John (2013). The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (2nd ed.). London: Taylor & Francis. p. 282. ISBN 978-1-317-86333-5.
  20. "New Publications". The Spectator (2590): 231. 16 February 1878.
  21. McAleer, Edward C., ed. (1966). Learned Lady: Letters from Robert Browning to Mrs. Thomas FitzGerald, 1876–1889. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 14, 165. ISBN 9780674732582.
  22. "Short Notices". The Bookseller: A Newspaper of British and Foreign Literature. London: Stevens & Haynes (460): 293. 6 March 1896.
  23. Harris, Emily Marion (1909). "Woman—Then and Now". In Gollancz, Hermann (ed.). Sermons and Addresses. New York: Bloch Publishing Co. pp. 102–107.
  24. Harris, Emily Marion (1917). "Baroness de Rothschild". In Friedlander, Joseph; Kohut, George Alexander (eds.). The Standard Book of Jewish Verse. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company. pp. 727–728.
  25. Catalogue of the Printed Books in the Library of the Faculty of Advocates. Vol. Supplementary volume. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons. 1879. p. 334.
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