author
Emma Wolf
1865–1932
A pioneering voice in American Jewish fiction, this San Francisco novelist wrote witty, socially observant stories about family, class, and assimilation. Her work found a wide readership in the 1890s and still stands out for its sharp eye and humane intelligence.
1 Audiobook
Other Things Being Equal
by Emma Wolf
About the author
Born in San Francisco in 1865, Emma Wolf was an American novelist and short story writer who published successfully while still young. Reliable reference sources agree that she wrote five novels, including Other Things Being Equal (1892), A Prodigal in Love (1894), The Joy of Life (1896), Heirs of Yesterday (1900), and Fulfillment (1916).
Wolf is often remembered as an early and important Jewish American writer. Her fiction drew on the world she knew best—well-to-do Jewish life in California—and explored questions of identity, social expectation, and belonging with warmth and irony.
She lived with a congenital physical disability and spent part of her life using a wheelchair. She died in 1932, but her work has continued to attract interest for the way it captures both the manners of her time and the pressures facing Jewish Americans in a changing society.