Description
Joseph Simon / Pangloss Press, Published 1991. Hardcover, xi, 430 pp.; 25 cm; illustrated with black-and-white line drawings and period reproductions.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
112
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Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In Very Good condition with a Very Good dust jacket. Rust-brown cloth boards, gilt lettering on spine, gilt device on front board. Light bumping to edges of covers, mild shelf wear. Binding tight. Pages clean and unmarked. Cream jacket with orange panel of Yiddish text and a Kishinevski line drawing of Mendele the book peddler, rear panel reproducing the same subject from an 1888 Russian publication. A few small nicks and light creasing to edges, light wear at head of spine, mild shelf wear. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. Volume I of a projected trilogy on the three classic writers of modern Yiddish literature, the others being Sholem Aleykhem and I.L. Peretz. Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh (c. 1836-1917) wrote under the name of his own creation, Mendele the Bookpeddler, and was dubbed by Sholem Aleykhem the grandfather of modern Yiddish literature. He began in Hebrew and turned to Yiddish to reach the Jewish masses of Eastern Europe, forging a modern literary language in both. Collects two complete novels, among them The Little Man (Dos Kleyne Mentshele, 1864), generally credited as the book that began the modern Yiddish literary renaissance, together with the first complete English translation of Mendele's Notes For My Biography, selections from three further novels, a complete short story, and a scholarly apparatus of biography, chronology, bibliography and glossary. Line drawings by Almon Pelles. Includes a reproduction of the front page of the Kiev Folkstsaytung for November 28, 1917, carrying the Jewish Labor Bund's notice of Mendele's death. Contents: Preface; A Note to the Reader on Translation and Transliteration; Chronology; Introduction: A Summary of Mendele's Life, Work, and Times; Notes For My Biography; The Little Man; Fishke the Lame; from The Mare; from The Travels of Benjamin III; Shem and Japheth on the Train; from Of Bygone Days; Bibliography: A Chronological List of Abramovitsh's Important Publications; Glossary.