Miriam Mendes Belisario

Miriam Mendes Belisario (Hebrew: מרים מנדס בליסאריו; 30 November 1816 – 1885), also known by the pen name Little Miriam,[1] was an English Jewish writer and educator.

Miriam Mendes Belisario
Born(1816-11-30)30 November 1816
London, England
Died1885 (aged 68–69)
London, England
Pen nameLittle Miriam
OccupationEducator and writer

Biography edit

Miriam Mendes Belisario was born in London in 1820, the daughter of Jamaican Jewish merchant Abraham Belisario.[2] Her paternal grandfather was artist Isaac Mendes Belisario.[3]

Belisario for many years ran an Orthodox girls' school in Clapton founded by her mother in 1807, in which numerous members of the Sephardic community were educated under her direction.[4][5] She compiled a Hebrew and English Vocabulary for a selection of the daily prayers (1848), and wrote Sabbath Evenings at Home (1856), a collection of dialogues on the Jewish religion. Belisaro was an influence upon the Christian writer Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna.[6]

Bibliography edit

  • Belisario, Miriam Mendes (1856). Sabbath Evenings at Home; or: Familiar Conversations on the Jewish Religion, its Spirit and Observances. London: S. Joel.
  • Belisario, Miriam Mendes (1848). A Hebrew and English Vocabulary, from a Selection of the Daily Prayers. London.

References edit

  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domainJacobs, Joseph (1902). "Belisario, Miriam Mendes". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. p. 661.

  1. ^ Galchinsky, Michael (1996). The Origin of the Modern Jewish Woman Writer: Romance and Reform in Victorian England. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8143-4445-3. OCLC 1014125029.
  2. ^ Endelman, Todd M. (1994). "The Frankaus of London: A Study in Radical Assimilation, 1837-1967". Jewish History. 8 (1): 117–154. doi:10.1007/BF01915911. hdl:2027.42/43006. JSTOR 20101194. S2CID 161441946.
  3. ^ Rottenberg, Dan (1986). Finding Our Fathers: A Guidebook to Jewish Genealogy. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company. p. 171. ISBN 978-0-8063-1151-7. OCLC 13880202.
  4. ^ Devine, Luke (Spring 2011). "Reading Jewish Identity, Spiritual Alienation, and Reform Judaism Through the Veil of Abstract Self-Hatred, Racial Degeneration, and Anti-Semitism in Julia Frankau's Dr. Phillips: A Maida Vale Idyll". Women in Judaism. 8 (1). ISSN 1209-9392.
  5. ^ Brown, Malcomb (1987). "The Jews of Hackney before 1840". Jewish Historical Studies. 30: 84. JSTOR 29779839.
  6. ^ Rubinstein, William D.; Jolles, Michael A.; Rubinstein, Hillary L., eds. (2011). The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History. London: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 67–68. ISBN 978-0-230-30466-6. OCLC 793104984.