author
Emma Wolf
1865–1932
A pioneering Jewish American novelist from San Francisco, she wrote sharp, socially observant fiction about identity, marriage, and belonging. Her work was widely read in her day and is now being rediscovered for the way it brought Jewish life into mainstream American literature.
1 Audiobook
Other Things Being Equal
by Emma Wolf
About the author
Born in San Francisco in 1865, Emma Wolf grew up in a Jewish family with roots in France and began publishing while still young. She went on to write five novels and numerous short stories, becoming one of the early American writers to place Jewish characters and questions of assimilation, interfaith marriage, and social expectation at the center of her fiction.
Wolf's best-known books include Other Things Being Equal, A Prodigal in Love, The Joy of Life, Heirs of Yesterday, and Fulfillment. Readers and scholars often describe her as an important early voice in Jewish American literature, not only because of her subject matter but also because of her lively, accessible style and close attention to everyday social life.
She spent much of her life in San Francisco and, according to biographical sources, lived with a congenital disability that led her to use a wheelchair for part of her life. She died in 1932, but interest in her work has continued to grow as more readers return to overlooked women writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.