In 1290, King Edward I expelled all Jews from the Kingdom of England. After the expulsion, there was no overt Jewish community until the rule of Oliver Cromwell. Although Cromwell never officially readmitted Jews to England, a small colony of Sephardic Jews living in London was identified in 1656, and allowed to remain.

England in the 19th century was no exception to the rest of Europe when it came to bigotry and anti-Semitism. Jewish-born Benjamin Disraeli had been converted to Christianity, allowing him to pursue a political career, at a time when Jews were barred from Parliament.  Even though he was elected twice as Prime Minister, he was constantly subjected to antisemitic slurs. He was regularly characterized in cartoons with a hook nose and a stooped posture.

[In answer to a personal insult by a member of Parliament, Disraeli wrote in a letter to the Times: “Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the right honourable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.”]

George Eliot (nee Mary Ann Evans) was the literary........

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