Cora Wilburn’s "Cosella Wayne," published serially in 1860 and never before published as a book, is both the first novel written and published in English by an American Jewish woman writer and the first coming-of-age novel to depict Jews in the United States. Set in the 1840s, it opens up a whole world of which we know little: a world of crooked gem dealers who traveled to exotic places, like Australia, India, and Venezuela, visiting Jews in each one; a world where a Jewish child might be “rescued” from her non-Jewish father so that it could be raised by Jewish parents; a world where a Jewish “father” molested his daughter; and a world where that daughter took solace in the new, heavily female movement known as Spiritualism, becoming for a time among its best-known writers. The story of Cora Wilburn—who lived for many years in the Boston area—as well as the story behind that story, form the subject of this lecture.
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