{"product_id":"cosella-wayne-or-will-and-destiny","title":"Cosella Wayne","description":"The first novel written and published in English by an American Jewish woman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Published serially in the spiritualist journal \u003ci\u003eBanner of Light\u003c\/i\u003e­ in 1860\u003ci\u003e, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003eCosella Wayne, or Will and Destiny\u003c\/i\u003e is the first coming-of-age novel to depict Jews in the United States and transforms what we know about the history of early American Jewish literature. The novel never appeared in book form, went unmentioned in Jewish newspapers of the day, and studies of nineteenth-century American Jewish literature ignore it completely. Yet the novel anticipates central themes of American Jewish writing: intermarriage, generational tension, family dysfunction, Jewish-Christian relations, immigration, poverty, the place of women in Jewish life, the nature of romantic love, and the tension between destiny and free will.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The narrative recounts a relationship between an abusive Jewish father and the rebellious daughter he molested as well as that daughter's efforts at finding a place in the complex social fabric of nineteenth-century America. It is also unique in portraying such themes as an unmarried Jewish woman's descent into poverty, her forlorn years as a starving orphaned seamstress, her apostasy and return to Judaism, and her quest to be both Jewish and a spiritualist at one and the same time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Jonathan Sarna, who introduces the volume, discovered \u003ci\u003eCosella Wayne\u003c\/i\u003e while pursuing research at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem. This edition is supplemented with Cora Wilburn's recently rediscovered diary, selections from which are reprinted in the appendix. Together, these materials help to situate \u003ci\u003eCosella Wayne \u003c\/i\u003ewithin the life and times of one of nineteenth-century American Jewry's least known and yet most prolific female authors.","brand":"The University of Alabama Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":32151339565139,"sku":"","price":28.5,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/1295\/4195\/files\/9780817359560_434a40b0-b784-4a8a-98fc-0c58fcf077af.jpg?v=1777977034","url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/cosella-wayne-or-will-and-destiny","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}