They Who Knock At Our Gates: A Complete Gospel of Immigration

Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. Very Good+ in Good dj. 1914. First Edition. Hardcover. [light shelfwear, minor dust-soiling to top of text block, one-time owner's name and address inked on front endpaper; the jacket is worn along the top edge, with numerous shallow chips, abrasions, etc., there are a couple of closed tears with associated creasing at the bottom of the rear panel, some paper loss at the top of the spine, and a tiny piece missing at the bottom edge of the front panel]. (B&W plates) A passionate argument against the then-current efforts to restrict immigration to America, a follow-up to her best-selling 1912 memoir "The Promised Land," still considered a classic of immigrant literature, in which she chronicled her own journey from Russia (present-day Belarus) to America at the age of thirteen, her public school education, and her assimilation into American culture. The success of the earlier book fueled her activism on behalf of immigrant rights, and made her a much sought-after lecturer for several years, although her writing career and public profile were unfortunately curtailed by a nervous breakdown she suffered in 1918, brought about in part by stress over her relationship with her husband due to his pro-German sympathies during World War I. The uncommon jacket has a beautiful wrap-around illustration by an artist whose name is printed a little fuzzily on the rear flap, and that I can't quite make out; last name possibly Booth or Boulle? (Definitely not Joseph Stella, who did the internal illustrations.) ***This book is among the nearly 150 items offered in ReadInk's new Catalog Number 4, "Booking Passage: Books on the Immigrant Experience." You can access this catalog and its contents in any one of three ways: (1) email us to request a PDF to be emailed to you; (2) view or download the catalog from the link on our website's main page; (3) browse the books individually (including a few that didn't make the cut for the catalog) on our website under these two subject headings: "Immigration: Fiction" and "Immigration: Non-Fiction." .