Judah, Samuel B. H. Gotham and the Gothamites, A Medley.

First Poem and Satire by an American Jew. Judah (1799-1876), a member of New York’s Cong. Shearith Israel, was one of the earliest American Jewish authors. His Gotham and the Gothamites, a satire in verse, “is an unrelieved flow of vitriol poured on the heads of numerous [more than 100] prominent New Yorkers, including Mordecai M. Noah” (Louis Harap, The Image of the Jew in American Literature, pp. 261-3). Judah was convicted of libel for this work, and he escaped imprisonment only because the governor pardoned him due to Judah’s ill health. Judah subsequently became a lawyer and “for many years was the only Jewish attorney in the city” (UJA, Vol. VI, p. 232). Singerman writes that a note in the HUC copy records “most copies lack the suppressed pp. xxi-xxiv.” The present copy is complete.