Isidore G. Ascher

Isidore Gordon Gottschalk Ascher (1835-1933) was a British-born Canadian poet and novelist.

Isidore Ascher (1835-1933), Voices From The Hearth: A collection of verses. Montreal: John Lovell / New York: D. Appleton, 1863. Courtesy Internet Archive.

Life

Youth and education

Ascher was born in Glasgow in 1835, the eldest son of Isaac Gottschalk Ascher and brother of Jacob Ascher.

His family moved to Canada in 1841, and Isidore received his education at Montreal High School. He then attended McGill University where he graduated in Law.

Career

Ascher was called to the Bar in 1862, but returned to England in 1864 and became a novelist and poet.

In 1872 he married Lilly, eldest daughter of Samuel Newman.

Ascher was a founder of Temple Emanu-El a Reform congregation founded in 1882, and an inaugural committee member of the Young Men's Hebrew Benevolent Society when established in 1863 in Montreal. This society later became the Baron de Hirsch Institute and Benevolent Society, an important North American charitable institution.(Citation needed)

Ascher died in London.

Writing

His early work, Voices From The Hearth, was published in Montreal in 1863, prior to his move to England, and received some praise:

Though not without occasional defects, which seem more the result of carelessness than of inability to do better, this volume reveals a subtle and delicate imagination, earnest and tender aspirations after the beautiful and the true, and, in several pieces, a rich musical harmony, which is full of promise of higher achievement in future, should Mr. Ascher continue to work the vein he has so auspiciously opened.

His novel An Odd Man's Story is the tale of a man who was duped by a rascal of a brother aided by a weak wife. There is no special reason for the tale, though it opens in a manner which seems to promise something a little out of the common.

Publications

Poetry

• Voices From The Hearth: A collection of verses. Montreal: John Lovell / New York: D. Appleton, 1863.
• One Hundred And Five Sonnets. Oxford, UK: Basil H. Blackwell, 1912.
• Collected Poems. London: E. Stock, 1929.

Play

• Circumstances Alter Cases. London, New York: Samuel French, 1888.

Novels

• An Odd Man's Story. London: Elliott Stock / Montreal: William Foster Brown, 1889
  • British Library (Historical Print Editions), 2010.
• The Doom Of Destiny. London: Diprose & Bateman, 1895.
• A Social Upheaval: A novel in twelve parts. London: Greening, 1898.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• Canadian Jewish poets
• List of British poets
• List of Canadian poets
• Timeline of Canadian poetry

External links

Poems

• "A Madrigal"
• "Indian Summer"
• "My Bridge"
• "Sleep and Death"
• "Richard Cobden. In memoriam."
• Isidore G. Ascher at Poetry Nook (2 poems)
• Isidore G. Ascher in the Standard Book of Jewish Verse: "Our Heritage," "Our Password," "Friday Night," "The Spirit of the Sabbath" "Sacred Lyric," "An Invocation"

Prose

• review of Empedocles on Etna, and other poems by Matthew Arnold

About

• Review of Voices from the Hearth: A collection of verses, by Gerald Massey (reproduced in the book Gerald Massey "Chartist, Poet, Radical and Thinker"- A Biography by David Shaw)