A Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Question, Theodor Herzl, London: David Nutt, 1896

115 pages (8 ½ x 5 ¼ in.; 214 x 135 mm). PAGINATION: xii, 102 [i]. Title page with remnant of owner's stamp and very lightly soiled. Otherwise, an extremely clean copy. Black morocco, gilt-stamped with vertical and diagonal double filetts; gilt title, author and imprint on spine.

M. Heymann, Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana-Treasures of Jewish Booklore (1994) pp.102-3.

FIRST ENGLISH EDITION OF THE  FOUNDATIONAL DOCUMENT OF POLITICAL ZIONISM

The euphemistic "Jewish Question" of the title, concerning the perceived inability of Jews to integrate within Western Europe had occupied Theodor Herzl since his days as a law student at the University of Vienna.  The direct impetus behind the work may be traced to his witnessing firsthand, the anti-Semitic hysteria aroused by the Dreyfus affair. Convinced that assimilation of the Jews into European society was unrealistic, he felt that what the Jews needed was a separate Jewish territorial entity, a state of their own. More than a century later, this book has been published in over 80 editions in nearly two dozen languages. It has served to direct the course of Jewish history onto a path that led to the birth of political Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel.

Printed in the same year as the German original, the first English edition is infinitely scarcer.