Francis Bacon and the Jews: Who was the Jew in the New Atlantis?
Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, first published in 162 7, a year after its author’s death, was the first book by an Englishman to view science as a dominant institution in the emerg ing world. By contrast, the Utopia of his predecessor, Thomas More (1478-1535), written more than a century earlier as a document of social protest on behalf of the displaced lower class, afforded no glimpse of the scientific civilization in the making. Bacon’s New Atlantis, furthermore, stands out as an exception to the dreary anti-Jewish sentiments that pervaded the great Elizabethan writers such as Marlowe and Shakespeare. For after his first days on the Pacific island of Bensalem, the hero of the New Atlantis has the good fortune to make the acquaintance of a helpful Jew: ‘By the time six or seven days were spent, I was fallen into straight acquaintance with a merchant of that city, whose name
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Lewis S. Feuer
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Other articles within the volume
- Dr Richard Barnett-a recollection
- The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization
- Eastern European Jewish immigrants in England: a quarter-century’s view*
- Lucien Wolf’s efforts for the Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe*
- Lyons versus Thomas: the Jewess abduction ease*
- From apology to revolt: Benjamin Farjeon, Amy Levy and the Post-emancipation Anglo-Jewish novel, 1880-1900*
- The Rothschilds and Disraeli in Buckinghamshire
- Agricultural land in Palestine: Letters to Sir Moses Montefiore, 1839
- Sir Moses Montefiore: a modern appreciation*
- The establishment of the Rothschilds as bankers*
- Isaac Disraeli and his quarrel with the Synagogue-a reassessment*
- Preface
- The Jews Of Bath*
- Anglo-Jewish trading connections with officers and seamen of the Royal Navy, 1740-1820*
- Jewish medical students and graduates in Scotland, 1739-1862*
- Contacts between Jews in Smyrna and the Levant Company of London in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries*
- Voltaire and the Sephardi bankrupt*
- English contemporary opinions on the Sabbatean movement
- Mr Pepys’ contacts with the Spanish and Portuguese Jews of London*
- Judaica Publications by R. D. Barnett (1909-1986)
- In Memoriam Richard David Barnett CBE, MA, DLitt, FBA, FSA (1909-I986)
- Francis Bacon and the Jews: Who was the Jew in the New Atlantis?
