Yiddish literature from its earliest beginnings in the sixteenth century was mostly used as a vehicle for the religious instruction of women and people of little education or merely adapted and translated some of the popular literature of the countries where its exponents lived. From the middle of the nineteenth century it commenced to assume a more independent character and thus secured a place in the world’s history as is shown by the fact that some of its works were translated into other European languages. Among the novelists may be mentioned Shalom Jacob Abramowitsch (born 1836) who writes under the pseudonym, “Mendele the bookseller,” Shalom Rabinowitsch (born 1859) and, the most popular of all, Isaac Loeb Peretz (born 1851). A poet who presents the tragic as well as the humorous side of the New York ghetto, Morris Rosenfeld, born 1864, is to be mentioned; his works have been translated into various European languages. Of dramatists whose works have occasionally found their way to the German and English stage there are Shalom Asch, and Jacob Gordin (1853-1909), who deals with the life of Russian Jews in America. The disappearance of the social and intellectual isolation in the life of the Jews created a special literature which is called the ghetto novel. This deals with the life of the Jews in the era of transition from their isolation to modern culture. This literature began in Germany and its best known representatives are Aaron Bernstein (1812-1884), Leopold Kompert (1822-1886), Karl Emil Franzos (1848-1904), and, among Christians who view the life of the Eastern Jews with sympathy, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1835-1895) and Eliza de Orzeska (1842-1910). Sketches from the life of the Alsatian Jews were presented in French by Alexander Weill (1811-1898) and in Danish by Meier Aaron Goldschmidt (1819-1887). In the English language, Israel Zangwill, born 1864, wrote novels dealing with the life of the foreign Jews in England. Among his works “The Children of the Ghetto” has obtained a place in the world’s best literature. The English stories of Martha Wolfenstein (1869-1906) deal with the life of European Jews. A place in modern Jewish literature belongs to the Jewish press as it has developed in the nineteenth century. The first Jewish periodical that had more than an ephemeral existence was “Meassef,” published in Hebrew with some parts in German. It began to appear in 1784, and with some interruptions was kept up until 1810. The oldest periodical still in existence is the “Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums,” begun by Ludwig Philippson, rabbi in Magdeburg, in 1837. It was followed by the “Archives Israélites” in 1840 in Paris, and by the “Jewish Chronicle” in 1841 in London. Of the numerous periodicals published in the United States, the oldest still existing is the “American Israelite,” founded by Isaac M. Wise in Cincinnati in 1854.