Naomi Jacob was a well loved and respected novelist, actress. As well as a number of novels such as the Gollantz Saga and An Irish Boy, she wrote non-fiction, biographies and newspaper columns. Her works often tackle the issue of prejudice against Jews, domestic violence and the political consequences of Pogroms in the nineteenth century.
Background
Naomi Jacob was born probably in 1884 in Ripon, North Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom, the first daughter of Samuel Jacob and Nina Collinson (a novelist under the name Nina Abbott). Her father was headmaster of what is now Ripon Grammar School. Jacob's pseudonym, Ellington Gray, shows her close connections to the town and her family. Her grandfather, Robert Ellington Collinson, was a Mayor of the town and owner of the Unicorn Hotel.
Jacob said little about her father, however, causing some to speculate that he may have been as brutal as the men in her fiction. Nevertheless, as Michael Jasper hypothesized in Dictionary of Literary Biography: “From her father’s side of the family she obtained the pride in the Jewish people and hatred for anti-Semitism and fascism that would form the second major theme of her fiction and would also thread through her many Me volumes.”
Education
Naomi attended several private schools in Yorkshire. As Michael Jasper comments: “Jacob was a large, gawky, and masculine child, and her teachers and classmates seem to have been put off by her appearance and her assertive, sometimes acerbic, ‘mannish’ personality”.
Career
Jacob’s education was sufficient, however, to allow her to teach at the age of fifteen. During this period, Jacob both performed and acted as secretary to Marguerite Broadfoote and she also became politically active, fighting for women’s suffrage and joining the Labour Party. With these artistic and political skills in place, Jacob was poised to join in the war effort in full force. She enlisted in the Women’s Emergency Corps (for which she acted as superintendent for a munitions factory), and soon developed the Three Arts Employment Fund, which provided war work for artists.
Jacob’s career began in earnest after her work in the war effort brought her notoriety among artists in London. She published her first novel, Jacob Ussher (1925), and thereafter produced works at an extraordinary rate. When Jacob began writing, she produced a book or two every year until she died. In 1930, Jacob moved to Sirmione, Italy where she lived for the rest of her life. Just prior to this move, Jacob had begun an intimate correspondence with Radclyffe Hall, whose novel about lesbian identity seems to have encouraged Jacob to move to the Mediterranean.
A Christian Science Monitor contributor, describing her work, remarked, “Her character drawing is deft and accurate - not flattering, but warm and fair. She writes a sound English novel, in the realistic tradition.”
She died in 1964.
Politics
Naomi supported the Labour Party and was a pacifist.
Membership
Naomi was a member of Actresses Franchise League, Women’s Emergency Corps, Three Arts Employment Fund.
Personality
Jacob's relationships with other women were an open secret but never publicly disclosed during her lifetime.