Singer, Isidore
SINGER, ISIDORE
SINGER, ISIDORE (1859–1939), writer and editor. Singer, born in Weisskirchen, Moravia, edited the Oesterreichische Literaturzeitung in 1884–85 and then became literary secretary to the French ambassador in Vienna. In 1887 he moved to Paris where he was employed by the press bureau of the French foreign office. Active in the defense of Alfred Dreyfus, he founded and edited La Vraie Parole (1893–94), which was intended to counteract *Drumont's La Libre Parole. Singer was a man of vision; among the plans which he cherished was one for an "encyclopedia of the history and mental evolution of the Jewish race." An article in the American Hebrew convinced him that this purpose could only be accomplished in the U.S. and on reading it he traveled to New York (1895) where he set about enlisting support for his project. After many difficulties, The Jewish *Encyclopedia appeared in 12 volumes (1901–09), with Singer as managing editor. He was also managing editor of the International Insurance Encyclopedia (7 vols., 1910) and coeditor of German Classics of the 19th and 20th Centuries, in 20 volumes. From 1882 onward he wrote a steady stream of books in German, French, and English. He was the editor of a memorial volume for the victims of the Kishinev pogrom, Russia at the Bar of the American People (1904), and in 1922 he founded the American League for the Rights of Man.
bibliography:
ajyb, 6 (1904/05), 188–9.
[Sefton D. Temkin]