Between 1830 and 1880, the Jewish community flourished in England. During this time known as haskalah, or the Anglo-Jewish Enlightenment, Jewish women in England became the first Jewish women anywhere to publish novels, histories, periodicals, theological tracts, and conduct manuals. The Origin of the Modern Jewish Woman Writer focuses on this critical but forgotten period in the development of Jewish women's writing. Michael Galchinsky rediscovers the earliest modern Jewish women writers, including Grace Aguilar, Marion Hartog, Judith and Charlotte Montefiore, and Anna Maria Goldsmid, and shows that, when viewed from the perspective of these women, modern Jewish cultural history looks remarkably different than it does in traditional histories of the period.