Whitechapel Boys

The name "Whitechapel Boys" identifies a loosely-knit group of Anglo-Jewish writers and artists of the early 20th century. It is named after Whitechapel, which contained one of London's main Jewish settlements and from which many of its members came. These members included Mark Gertler, Isaac Rosenberg, David Bomberg, Joseph Leftwich, Jacob Kramer, Morris Goldstein, Stephen Winsten, John Rodker, Lazarus Aaronson and its only female member, Clara Birnberg.^[1][2]

The name is modern, not a contemporary one, originating later in the 20th century.^[1]

Several of the Whitechapel Boys, such as Rodker, Rosenberg, Leftwich, Winsten and Bomberg, were also politically active and members of the radical Young Socialist League.^[3][4]

References

1. Dickson, Rachel; MacDougall, Sarah (2004). "The Whitechapel Boys". Jewish Quarterly (Routledge) 51 (3): 29–34. doi:10.1080/0449010X.2004.10706848.
2. MacDougall, Sarah (2010). "'Something is happening there': early British modernism the Great War and the 'Whitechapel Boys'". In Walsh, Michael J. K. London, Modernism, and 1914. Cambridge University Press. p. 126. ISBN 978-0-521-19580-5.
3. Patterson, Ian (2013). "The Translation of Soviet Literature". In Beasley, Rebecca; Bullock, Philip Ross. Russia in Britain, 1880-1940: From Melodrama to Modernism. Oxford University Press. p. 189. ISBN 978-0-19-966086-5.
4. Moorcroft Wilson, Jean (2009). Isaac Rosenberg: The Making of a Great War Poet: A New Life (U.S. ed.). Northwestern University Press. pp. 85, 98, 101, 181. ISBN 978-0-8101-2604-6.

External links

• Whitechapel at War: Isaac Rosenberg and his Circle - an exhibition at the Ben Uri Gallery, part of a series of exhibitions on the Whitechapel Boys
• Review of the exhibition