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Subject Guide: Literature

Shmuel Yosef Agnon Stamp. 2015.022. YUM.

Photograph of an envelope featuring a Shmuel Yosef Agnon stamp.

Archival Highlights

Shmuel Joseph Agnon Collection  (LBIJER 333) [Collection is digitized and available online.]

Shmuel Yosef Agnon was an Austro-Hungarian-born Israeli novelist, poet, and short-story writer. He was one of the central figures of modern Hebrew literature. His works deal with the conflict between the traditional Jewish life and language and the modern world. Agnon had a distinctive linguistic style, mixing modern and rabbinic Hebrew. In 1966, he shared the Nobel Prize in Literature with the poet Nelly Sachs. This collection contains correspondence between Agnon and publisher Hans Tramer as well as manuscript pages of short stories by Agnon. 

Pinchas Guterman Papers (RG 748)

Pinchas Guterman was a Polish-born writer who worked in both Hebrew and Yiddish. Over his career he contributed to papers like Letste nayesDos vortand Di yidishe tsaytung. This collection consists of manuscripts of Guterman's works, including the autobiographical novel Mayn shtetl (My Town), as well as some clippings.

Ephraim E. Lisitzky Collection (P-627)

Ephraim Lisitzky was born in Minsk but raised in America. He was a teacher of Hebrew and Jewish studies, a poet, and a writer of articles in the Hebrew press. This collection consists of letters written by Lisitzky to Mrs. Naomi Buchhalter Flock, 1934-1962, as well as some published poems and a short obituary.

Samuel Schachter Papers (P-108)

This collection contains 17 notebooks of Hebrew manuscript poems, folk-tales, and riddles on themes of Biblical and Rabbinical literature from the 1880s, highlighted here for the rarity of the materials. 

Zalman Shneur Papers (RG 764)

Zalman Shneur was a poet and novelist, working in both Hebrew and Yiddish, playing a significant role in the development of modern Hebrew poetry. Born in Belarus, but living in many countries over the course of his life, Shneur eventually settled in Israel. The papers consist of correspondence, manuscripts of poems, plays, novels in both Hebrew and Yiddish, translations of his works, clippings by and about Shneur, personal documents, and photographs.

Zalman Shneour. Lithograph by Hermann Struck. 78.484. LBI.

Lithograph of Zalman Shneour, created by Hermann Struck.

Library Highlights

The invention of Hebrew prose : modern fiction and the language of realism / by Robert Alter. University of Washington Press, 1988.

The thorny path / by Dvorah Baron. Translated from the Hebrew by Joseph Schachter. Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature, 1969

Israeli stories : a selection of the best contemporary Hebrew writing / edited by Joel Blocker. Schocken Books, 1966.

Breakdown and bereavement: a novel / by Yosef Haim Brenner. Translated from the Hebrew by Hillel Halkin. JPSA, 1971.

The literary review : Israeli number / Fairleigh Dickinson University, 1958

Modern Hebrew literature, from the Enlightenment to the birth of the State of Israel; trends and values / by Simon Halkin. Schocken Books, 1970.

Yehuda Amichai : Hebrew poet for all seasons / by Barbara Hantman. Manuscript was presented as a lecture at the New York Poetry Forum’s May 2009 Memorial Day program by NYPF member Barbara Hantman with the assistance of Ely Ramzi. [Digitized and available online.]

Under this blazing light : essays / by Amos Oz ; translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas de Lange. Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1995.

Saul Tschernichowsky; poet of revolt / by Saul Tschernichowsky. Translation from the Hebrew by Sholom J. Kahn & others. Cornell University Press, 1968.

Evolution of modern Hebrew literature, 1850-1912 / by Abraham Solomon Waldstein. Columbia University Press, 1916.