Strangers in the Archive
Jordan Schnitzer Book Award, (2023, Winner)
Winner of the 2023 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award for best book in the category of Jewish literature and linguistics
Traditionally the scene of some of London’s poorest, most crime-ridden neighborhoods, the East End of London has long been misunderstood as abject and deviant. As a landing place for migrants and newcomers, however, it has also been memorably and colorfully represented in the literature of Victorian authors such as Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde. In Strangers in the Archive, Heidi Kaufman applies the resources of archives both material and digital to move beyond icon and stereotype to reveal a deeper understanding of East End literature and culture in the Victorian age.
Kaufman uncovers this engaging new perspective on the East End through Maria Polack’s Fiction without Romance (1830), the first novel to be published by an English Jew, and through records of Polack’s vibrant community. Although scholars of nineteenth-century London and readers of East End fictions persist in privileging sensational narratives of Jack the Ripper and the infamous "Fagin the Jew" as signs of universal depravity among East End minority ethnic and racial groups, Strangers in the Archive considers how archival materials are uniquely capable of redressing cultural silences and marginalized perspectives as well as reshaping conceptions of the global significance of literary and print culture in nineteenth-century London.
Many of this book’s subjects—including digital editions of rare books and manuscript diaries, multimedia maps, and other related East End print records—can be viewed online at the Lyon Archive and the Polack Archive.
- Joseph McLaughlin, Ohio University, author of Writing the Urban Jungle: Reading Empire in London from Doyle to EliotMeticulously researched and theorized, Strangers in the Archive addresses questions germane to specialists in Victorian studies and, more broadly, archival studies. It deepened my understanding of the Jewish East End in the nineteenth century, its imbrication in global networks, and the ways in which archival evidence opens up pathways to important and detailed stories, even when they don’t take the form one initially expected. The book is also written in an engaging style, taking the form of a literary detective story, compelling as it moves from obstacle to insight.
Comparing the profiles of disparate genres of writing dispersed over a forty-year period (1812 through 1856) was always going to be tricky, but Kaufman handles their complexity with remarkable aplomb. . . Kaufman is excellent throughout on the delicacy of archival work, mediating deftly between the divergent voices and interests that emerge within and around conflicting records of historical events.- Victorian Studies
- SEL MarginaliaKaufman…illustrates how scholars can listen to what stories are told by the archive while addressing which stories are missing or excluded. Kaufman pushes scholars to go beyond their intended research subjects and examine the broader community that these subjects were engaging with and responding to.
Heidi Kaufman is Associate Professor of English at the University of Oregon and author of English Origins, Jewish Discourse, and the Nineteenth-Century British Novel: Reflections on a Nested Nation and co-editor of Caribbean Jewish Crossings: Literary History and Creative Practice (Virginia).
1. Before the Archive: East End Discourse out of Context
2. Archive Models
3. The Noisy Archive: A.S. Lyon's East End Diaries
4. An Archive of Lies
Conclusion: Strangers in the Archive
Postscript
