Maria Polack

{{short description|English novelist and educator}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

{{Infobox writer

| name = Maria Polack

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| birth_date = {{Birth date|1787|01|31|df=y}}

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| death_date = {{Death date and age|1849|01|08|1787|01|31|df=y}}

| death_place = Whitechapel

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| occupation = Teacher of music and poetry

| language = English

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| genre = Fiction

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| notableworks = Fiction without Romance (1830)

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Maria Polack (31 January 1787 – 8 January 1849{{cite news|title= Died|newspaper=The Jewish Chronicle|date=12 January 1849|page=116 }}) was an English Jewish novelist and educator. Her father, Ephraim Polack,{{cite news|title= A Hundred and One Years Old|newspaper=The Jewish Chronicle|date=1 March 1901|page=19 }} was a prominent member of the Great Synagogue of London,{{cite book|title=Sketches of Anglo-Jewish History|first=James|last=Picciotto|location=London|publisher=Trübner & Co.|date=1875|url=https://archive.org/details/sketchesofangloj00piccuoft|page=[https://archive.org/details/sketchesofangloj00piccuoft/page/232 232]|oclc=186884797}} and her niece (or perhaps daughter), Elizabeth Polack, was the first Jewish woman melodramatist in England.{{cite book|last=Weltman|first=Sharon|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wRRwDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA204|title="Women Playwrights and the London Stage," in The History of British Women's Writing, 1830–1880|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|year=2018|isbn=978-1-137-58465-6|editor-last=Hartley|editor-first=Lucy|page=204}}

In 1830 Polack published by subscription the two-volume anti-romance Fiction without Romance, or The Locket Watch, which focuses on the importance of female education and respecting religious and class differences.{{cite book | last=Galchinsky | first=Michael | title=The Origin of the Modern Jewish Woman Writer: Romance and Reform in Victorian England | publisher=Wayne State University Press | year=1996 | isbn=978-0-8143-2613-8 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BdWfQNTp-dwC&pg=PA100 | page=100}}{{cite journal|first=Heidi|last=Kaufman|title=1800-1900: Inside and Outside the Nineteenth-Century East End|url=http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=heidi-kaufman-1800-1900-inside-and-outside-the-nineteenth-century-east-end|journal=BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History|date=2016|access-date=14 May 2019}}{{cite news|title= Books published this day|newspaper=The Globe|date=14 May 1830|page=1 }} The novel depicts a gentile family in Devonshire, a member of whom, Eliza Desbro, encounters a sympathetic Jewish family after discovering her status as a bastard.{{cite book | last=Scrivener | first=Michael | title=Jewish Representation in British Literature 1780-1840: After Shylock | series=Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters| publisher=Palgrave Macmillan | location=New York| year=2011 | isbn=978-1-349-28741-3 | oclc=951509609| doi=10.1057/9780230120020| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JYnFAAAAQBAJ|page=133}}{{cite book|first=Heidi|last=Kaufman|chapter=England's Jewish Renaissance: Maria Polack's Fiction Without Romance (1830) in Context | editor-last=Spector | editor-first=Sheila A.| title=Romanticism/Judaica: A Convergence of Cultures | publisher=Ashgate Publishing Company | location=Farnham, Surrey | year=2011 | isbn=978-0-7546-6880-0 | pages=69–84|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1317061292}} The one-hundred and twenty subscribers to Polack's book included John Braham (two copies), Mrs Nathan Rothschild (five copies), and members of the Goldsmid family (six copies).{{cite journal|first=David|last=Conway|title=John Braham—From Meshorrer to Tenor|journal=Jewish Historical Studies: Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England|volume=41|location=London|date=2007|publisher=Jewish Historical Society of England|pages=37–61|jstor=29780093}} A second, non-subscriber edition was published two years after the first edition.{{cite news|title= Just Published|newspaper=Athenaeum and Literary Chronicle|date=21 April 1832|page=261}}