Anti-Semitism and the North American Novel

Laura Z. Hobson’s The Gentleman’s Agreement, a best-selling 1947 novel, brought American “genteel” anti-Semitism into the limelight, especially after it was turned into a movie. It was preceded, and partially inspired, by a Canadian novel called Earth and High Heaven, also a loosely autobiographical account of interfaith romance and concealed but intense anti-Semitism. The author of the latter, Gwethalyn Graham, was a Canadian Christian who had had a romance with a Jew, while Hobson was a Jew who had fallen in love with a gentile. Both novels were part of a wave, writes Rachel Gordan: