Rosenberg, Isaac

(1890-1918)

   He was born in Bristol to a Lithuanian Jewish couple, and when he was seven, the family moved to Whitechapel, London, where his father worked as a pedler and market dealer. Isaac served an apprenticeship as an engraver and studied painting at evening classes at Birkbeck College, London, and was inspired by reading the works of the great poets. In 1911 three Jewish women paid for him to attend the Slade School of Fine Art, London, where he won several prizes. In 1915 he enlisted in the Army; he was drafted into the King's Own Royal Lancaster Regiment and sailed for France in 1916. The anti-Semitism he experienced in the Army is expressed in several of his poems. He was killed on the western front and buried in an unmarked grave, and is memorialized by a stone in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey along with other poets of the First World War. His Collected Works, with a foreword by Siegfried Sassoon (see entry), was published in 1937. Some of his poems: "Break of Day in the Trenches," "Louse Hunting," "Moses," "Night and Day," "Returning, We Hear the Larks," "The Unicorn."

   Sources: A Treasury of Jewish Poetry. Nathan Ausubel and Maryann Ausubel, eds. Crown, 1957. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language. Francis Turner Palgrave, ed. Oxford University Press, 1964, Sixth edition, updated by John Press, 1994. Selected Poems and Letters of Isaac Rosenberg. Jean Liddiard, ed. Enitharmon Press, 2003. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Norton Antholog y of Poetry. 4th ed. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter and Jon Stal, eds. W.W. Norton, 1996. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry. Jon Silkin, ed. Penguin Books, 1979. Westminster Abbey Official Guide (no date).