 | Source: Wikipedia Israel Zangwill (February 14, 1864 - August 1, 1926) was a British-born Zionist and writer. His early life was spent in the East End of London, and he was a teacher in the Jewish Free School there. In later life, his friends included Jerome K. Jerome and H. G. Wells. He wrote an influential novel Children of the Ghetto (1892), and his play The Melting Pot was a hit in the USA in 1908-1909. He also wrote mystery works, such as The Big Bow Mystery, the first novella-length locked-room puzzle. However, he is best known for coining the slogan, "a land without a people for a people without a land" to describe the nation that is now Israel. |
Zangwill, a British Jew, founded an organization called the Jewish Territorialist Organization in 1905, the aim of which was to create a Jewish homeland in whatever possible territory in the world (and not necessarily in what today is the state of Israel). Zangwill died in 1926 after trying to create the Jewish state in such diverse places as Canada, Australia, Mesopotamia, Uganda and Cyrenaica.
Several of Zangwill's works are available from Project Gutenberg.
Bibliography
The Big Bow Mystery (1892)
The Grey Wig (1903) {contains The Big Bow Mystery and other stories}