27 Facts About Grace Aguilar

Grace Aguilar was an English novelist, poet and writer on Jewish history and religion.

Grace Aguilar's debut was an anonymous collection of poems, The Magic Wreath of Hidden Flowers.

Grace Aguilar added a preface to the work elucidating his differences with her, the first of many clashes her work would have with mainstream Jewish thought.

Grace Aguilar was born in the east London suburb of Hackney on 2 June 1816.

Grace Aguilar was the oldest child of her parents, who were both descended from Portuguese Jews.

Grace Aguilar's family settled in Jamaica and eventually in England in the 18th century following the Portuguese Inquisition.

Grace Aguilar was tutored in the classics at home and was not permitted to move outside of her family circle.

Grace Aguilar's condition did not stop her from learning to dance and play the harp and piano, common pursuits for middle-class English girls of that era, or traveling.

When Grace Aguilar's father contracted tuberculosis, the family moved to Devon.

Sarah Aguilar's health took a turn for the worse during this period, as she recovered from surgical treatment for an illness that has not yet been identified from the records available, and Grace spent time taking care of her as she had her father.

In 1835, at the age of 19, Grace Aguilar was again taken ill herself, with measles.

Grace Aguilar decided to try making a living as a writer, and that year was able to get her first book of poems published.

In 1838 Grace Aguilar's father prevailed upon her to translate Isaac Orobio de Castro's Israel Defended, an apologia for Judaism, from the original French for private distribution among Brighton's Jewish community.

Grace Aguilar added a preface that, albeit with some ambivalence, explained that she had softened Orobio's castigations of Christians as a result of the tolerance she felt Victorian England had shown to its Jewish population compared with Catholic Spain and Portugal.

Grace Aguilar declined, but on her own she was able to persuade Isaac Leeser, editor of The Occident, an American Jewish magazine, to publish her theological tract The Spirit of Judaism as the initial volume of a new series of books he was bringing out.

The original manuscript was lost at sea, but Grace Aguilar was able to recreate it from her notes, and it was published in 1842.

When she received her copy, Grace Aguilar was angry that Leeser had added a preface detailing his differences of opinion with Grace Aguilar.

The book was nevertheless well-received, and Grace Aguilar began publishing poems in small English journals.

Grace Aguilar befriended Solomon Cohen, the first Jewish state senator in Georgia and his wife Miriam, which contributed to the success of her work in the South as they distributed her books widely there.

In 1847 Grace Aguilar came down with a spinal paralysis; in spite of the illness she went ahead with a planned trip to Europe.

Grace Aguilar later visited Emanuel at Frankfurt, where he had become a successful musician.

Grace Aguilar was buried at the Frankfurt Jewish cemetery in Hessen, Germany.

Grace Aguilar's early collected poems, under the title The Magic Wreath of Hidden Flowers, were published anonymously in 1835; each is a riddle with clues to the name of a particular flower.

Grace Aguilar's productions are chiefly stories and religious works dealing with Jewish subjects.

The first of Grace Aguilar's religious works was a translation of the French version of Israel Defended, by the Marrano Orobio de Castro, printed for private circulation.

Grace Aguilar requested him to revise the manuscript of the Spirit of Judaism, which was forwarded to him, but was lost.

Grace Aguilar inveighed against formalism, and laid stress upon knowledge of Jewish history and the Hebrew language.