The year 1888 is momentous in the history of Judeo-German literature: it gave birth to two annuals, _Die jüdische Volksbibliothēk_ and _Der Hausfreund_, around which were gathered all the best forces that could be found among the Jewish writers. The first, under the leadership of S. Rabinowitsch, started out with the purpose of clearing away all rubbish from the field of Jewish letters and to prepare it for a new, a better harvest; the second set out to serve the people with the best existing literary productions. The latter was doomed to a certain mediocrity on account of the bounds which it had placed around itself; the first, in exercising a severe criticism on the productions presented for publication, and in purifying the public taste, attracted from the start the best talent obtainable and encouraged young promising men to try themselves in Jargon letters. In the _Volksbibliothēk_ appeared the firstling from the pen of Leon Perez, the poet and novelist, who must be counted among the greatest writers not only of Judeo-German literature, but of literature in general at the end of the nineteenth century. If he had written nothing else but 'The Sewing of the Wedding Gown,' his name would live as long as there could be found people to interpret the language in which he sings. But he has produced several large volumes of admirable works in prose and in verse. Leon Perez, or Izchok Leibusch Perez, as he proudly prefers to be called, was born in 1855 in Zamoszcz, the city which has been the birthplace of so many famous men in Hebrew and Judeo-German letters, the home of Zederbaum and Ettinger. He obtained his education in a curious way. In his town there had lived a surgeon's assistant who, on becoming rich, had collected a library on all kinds of subjects, numbering nearly three thousand volumes. There came reverses to him, and his books were stored away pell mell in the loft. Perez somehow got hold of the key to that room, and without choice took to reading, until the whole library was swallowed up by his omnivorous appetite. He read everything he could get hold of, and he learned German through a work on physics which he had discovered in the loft. Then he passed on from science to science, all by himself. Then he studied Heine by heart, then Shelley, and then he became a mystic. This history of his education is also the history of his genius. There is reflected in it the subtleness of the Talmud, the wisdom of the ancients, the sparkle of Heine, the transcendency of Shelley, the mysticism of Hauptmann. He has treated masterfully the Talmudical legend, has composed in the style of the Romancero, and has carried allegory to the highest degree of perfection.