Zangwill (1864-1926) was a British author at the forefront of cultural Zionism during the 19th century. He was born in London to a family of Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire and dedicated his life to championing the cause of people he considered oppressed. He was involved in topics such as Jewish emancipation and assimilation, later rejecting the search for a Jewish homeland in Palestine to become the prime thinker behind the territorial movement. He began his writing career in journalism, and soon earned the nickname "the Dickens of the Ghetto" following the success of his novels and plays giving a realistic representation of life in Jewish immigrant communities, notable for his ability to simulate Yiddish sentence structure into English. This novel - A Folk-Comedy of Rural England - was first published in 1919.