The Jew. In three volumes. Vol. I [-III]. London, Edward Bull, 1832.
First Edition in English. Three volumes, 8vo (220 x 124 mm), pp. [iv], iv, 342, [1] advertisements; [iv], 336; [iv], 324, uncut throughout in contemporary pink boards with green cloth spines, bindings a little sprung and slightly delicate but holding, a little dusty and worn at extremities, printed labels on spines, green bookseller’s labels on front boards.
First English edition of Carl Spindler’s Der Jude, first published in Stuttgart in 1827. One of several historical romances by the actor turned novelist: he joined a company of strolling players in Germany before turning his hand to historical fiction. He was a prolific author in many fields and edited a periodical publication, Vergissmeinicht, which ran from 1830 until his death in 1855 and included a number of minor novels. He is mainly remembered for his historical fiction, the best of which was published in a flurry in the late 1820s, although his published work runs to some hundred volumes.
‘The Editor of the Jew deems it necessary to state that these volumes are a very free version of a work, bearing the same title, which has attained to a high degree of popularity upon the continent... The five volumes (of the original German) before us, contain as many incidents and characters as would set up five common novelists in their trade; and yet the whole of this enormous mass is managed with a dexterity rarely exhibited by a common novelist in the execution of his own comparatively easy task. The principal personages rise above the crowd in a distinct and conspicuous manner; and the main stream of the story is never confounded with the thousand tributaries that rush into its course’ (Introduction, pp. i-iv).
The present novel is not in Wolff which does list his The Jesuit, a picture of manners and character from the first quarter of the eighteenth century, London, Edward Bull, 1839. Sadleir includes none of his works.
Not in Sadleir or Wolff.