20th Century Portraits Catalogue

Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918), Painter and poet

Born in Bristol but moved to London in 1897; educated at the Baker Street board school, Stepney, where he showed a natural gift for both drawing and writing; apprenticed to the firm of Carl Hentschel, engravers, in 1904; studied at Slade School of Fine Art from 1911; moved to South Africa for his health in 1914 but returned to England in 1915; continued writing and published pamphlets of poems Night and Day (1912) and Youth (1915); enlisted in the army in 1915; died on the western front near Fampoux, France in April 1918.

Referencesback to top

Cohen 1975
Cohen, J. Journey to the Trenches: The Life of Isaac Rosenberg, 1890-1918 (London: Robson Books, 1975)

Collecott n.d.
Collecott, D. ‘Isaac Rosenberg (1880-1918): A Cross-Cultural Study’, in Newman, ed., Jewish East End, pp. 268-80

Liddiard 1975
Liddiard, J. Isaac Rosenberg: The Half Used Life (London: V Gollancz, 1975)

Parsons (ed.) 1979
Parsons, I. ed. The Collected Works of Isaac Rosenberg: Poetry, Prose, Letters, Paintings and Drawings (London: Chatto and Windus, 1979)

Tomlinson 1982
Tomlinson, C. Isaac Rosenberg of Bristol (Bristol: Historical Association, 1982)

Wilson 1975
Wilson, J. M. Isaac Rosenberg, Poet and Painter: A Biography (London: Cecil Woolf, 1975)

Wilson 2008
Wilson, J. M. Isaac Rosenberg: The Making of a Great War Poet: A New Life (London: Weidenfield & Nicholson, 2008)