Emma Wolf

A first edition of Other Things Being Equal by Emma Wolf, inscribed by the author to her brother.

• Emma Wolf (American).
• Chicago: A.C. McClurg and Company, 1892.
•  275, [1], [4] pages. 
• Inscribed by Wolf: "With 'the author's' love to her dear, every day dearer brother." 
• Original brown cloth with black-stamped floral frame on front board, gilt-lettered spine, publisher's ads at rear.

"Two ideas held him in a desperate struggle, — his child's happiness; the prejudice of a lifetime."

Wolf was a Jewish woman and wheelchair user born in California; her father, an immigrant from France, helped settle the Bay area in the 1840s. In the Gilded Age, most Jewish representation focused on the Eastern European immigrants living on the East Coast, especially New York City: Wolf's novels of high society in the West add welcome complexity to the literary landscape and counteract monolithic interpretations of US Jewish culture. This was Wolf's first novel, and its importance was immediately recognized, as evidenced in a letter Israel Zangill sent to the author, telling her: "Certainly you are the best product of American Judaism since Emma Lazarus."