Eliza Davis (letter writer)

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Eliza Davis (1817–1903) was a Jewish English woman who is remembered for her correspondence with the novelist Charles Dickens about his depiction of Jewish characters in his novels.

Davis was born in Jamaica. In 1835 she married her cousin{{Cite news |last=Musgrove |first=Theresa |date=18 May 2022 |title=Was Dickens' guilt about Fagin a product of his Jewish family? |work=The Jewish Chronicle |url=https://www.thejc.com/lets-talk/all/was-dickens'-guilt-about-fagin-a-product-of-his-jewish-family-2SiUGU0vTaRQnZRRsc65vN?previewToken=89486abbb8d843318940cf28a84a9835 |access-date=18 May 2022}} James Phineas Davis (1812–1886), a banker, who, in 1860, bought Tavistock House in London from Dickens.{{Cite journal |last=Baumgarten |first=Murray |date=March 2015 |title="The Other Woman" – Eliza Davis and Charles Dickens |url=https://dickens.ucsc.edu/resources/pickwick-club/the-other-woman--eliza-davis.pdf |journal=Dickens Quarterly |volume=32 |issue=1 |page=45 |doi=10.1353/dqt.2015.0008 |s2cid=162101435 |access-date=9 March 2021}}

Dickens' novel Oliver Twist refers to one of its characters, Fagin, 274 times{{Cite book |last=Dickens, Charles |url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/730/730-h/730-h.htm |title=Oliver Twist |publisher=Project Gutenberg |author-link=Charles Dickens |access-date=9 March 2021}} in the first 38 chapters as "the Jew", while the ethnicity or religion of the other characters is rarely mentioned. In 1854, The Jewish Chronicle asked why "Jews alone should be excluded from the 'sympathizing heart' of this great author and powerful friend of the oppressed."{{Cite journal |last=Baumgarten |first=Murray |date=March 2015 |title="The Other Woman" – Eliza Davis and Charles Dickens |url=https://dickens.ucsc.edu/resources/pickwick-club/the-other-woman--eliza-davis.pdf |journal=Dickens Quarterly |volume=32 |issue=1 |page=56 |doi=10.1353/dqt.2015.0008 |s2cid=162101435 |access-date=10 March 2021}} Dickens (who had extensive knowledge of London street life and child exploitation) explained that he had made Fagin Jewish because "it unfortunately was true, of the time to which the story refers, that that class of criminal almost invariably was a Jew."{{Cite news |last=Howe |first=Irving |author-link= Irving Howe|date=31 May 2005 |title=Oliver Twist – introduction |publisher=Random House Publishing |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R63Gk3ntfFkC&pg=PR19 |isbn=9780553901566}} Dickens commented that by calling Fagin a Jew he had meant no imputation against the Jewish faith, saying in a letter, "I have no feeling towards the Jews but a friendly one. I always speak well of them, whether in public or private, and bear my testimony (as I ought to do) to their perfect good faith in such transactions as I have ever had with them."{{Cite book |last=Johnson |first=Edgar |title=Charles Dickens His Tragedy And Triumph |date=1 January 1952 |publisher=Simon & Schuster |chapter=4 – Intimations of Mortality |access-date=8 February 2009 |chapter-url=http://dickens.ucsc.edu/OMF/johnson.html}}

Eliza Davis, whose husband had purchased the lease on Dickens's home in 1860 when he had put it up for sale, wrote to Dickens in 1863, protesting at his portrayal of Fagin, arguing that he had "encouraged a vile prejudice against the despised Hebrew",{{Cite web |last=Bush |first=Lawrence |date=8 June 2017 |title=Charles Dickens and the Jews |url=https://archive.jewishcurrents.org/charles-dickens-and-the-jews/ |access-date=10 March 2021 |website=Jewish Currents}} and that he had done a great wrong to the Jewish people.{{Cite magazine |last=Hitchens, Christopher |author-link = Christopher Hitchens|date=5 January 2012 |title=Charles Dickens's Inner Child |url=http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/02/hitchens-201202 |magazine=Vanity Fair |access-date=10 March 2021}} While Dickens first reacted defensively upon receiving Davis's letter, he then halted the printing of Oliver Twist, and changed the text for the parts of the book that had not been set, which explains why after the first 38 chapters Fagin is barely called "the Jew" at all in the next 179 references to him.{{Cite news |last=Vallely |first=Paul |author-link=Paul Vallely |date=7 October 2005 |title=Dickens' greatest villain: The faces of Fagin |work=The Independent |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/dickens-greatest-villain-the-faces-of-fagin-509906.html |access-date=13 February 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081205101924/http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/dickens-greatest-villain-the-faces-of-fagin-509906.html |archive-date=5 December 2008}}