Naomi Jacob
Naomi Jacob was an English author born in Ripon, Yorkshire, around July 1884, who is best known for her romance novels. Growing up in a family with deep Yorkshire roots, her mother was a successful novelist, while her father had Mediterranean Jewish heritage. Jacob was raised in the Anglican faith but later converted to Roman Catholicism, maintaining pride in her Jewish background. Though she faced challenges in her early life, including social awkwardness and a difficult school experience, she found a passion for teaching and later ventured into the theater as a secretary for a vaudevillian.
During World War I, Jacob contributed significantly on the home front, taking on various roles including factory supervision and volunteer organization. After recovering from tuberculosis, she pursued acting while writing her first romance novel, "Jacob Ussher." Her literary works often feature strong, solitary female protagonists navigating troubled marriages and ultimately finding love or independence. Jacob's narrative style includes intricate plots and well-defined characters, culminating in happy resolutions. In her later years, she embraced her identity as a homosexual and moved to Italy in search of a more liberated environment. Jacob's legacy includes her extensive autobiographical writings, which provide insights into her life, although she never addressed her sexuality directly in her publications. She passed away on August 26, 1964.
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Naomi Jacob
- Born: Probably July, 1884
- Birthplace: Ripon, Yorkshire, England
- Died: August 26, 1964
Biography
Naomi Jacob was born in Ripon, Yorkshire, amid the harsh farmland that would be the setting for her popular romance novels. The exact date has never been established, most likely in July, 1884. Her mother was a popular novelist whose family had farmed in Yorkshire for generations; her father was of Mediterranean Jewish descent. Jacob was raised Anglican and eventually converted to Roman Catholicism, although Jacob was fiercely proud of her Jewish roots. In a life that she subjected to volumes of autobiographical exploration, her father is seldom mentioned. Socially and physically awkward as a child, Jacob never enjoyed schooling, although when she was compelled by her family’s financial situation to leave school at fifteen, her first job was as a teacher, a profession she relished.
At eighteen, however, Jacob left teaching to become secretary to a British vaudevillian, where she got her first exposure to the world of the theater. During World War I, Jacob was active in the home front, working and supervising factory jobs and organizing volunteer projects. Following the war and her recovery from a near-death attack of tuberculosis, Jacob began to act, beginning her own two-decade, on-and-off again acting career.
In the meantime, she published her first romance, Jacob Ussher. Her familiarity with the dynamics of drama gave her a strong sense of both suspense and character psychology. Although given Jacob’s productivity over the next two decades, making generalities about her romances is risky, Jacob was drawn to the solitary, noble young woman who, locked in a miserable marriage to an insensitive, often brutish man, eventually finds spiritual release through involvement with a finer, more sensitive lover. That her novels followed a pattern is not surprising given the formal restrictions of the romance genre: Her characters are reliably readable as good or evil; her plots are compelled by elaborate twists; she introduces a range of entertaining secondary characters; and she moves inevitably toward a happy ending, either the woman’s independence or her remarriage. In addition to her Yorkshire romances, Jacob published an ambitious four-volume saga of a Jewish family,
By 1930, Jacob accepted her homosexual identity. Finding England too stifling, she moved to Italy. During the war, however, she briefly returned to England and established a national profile for her efforts (and her flamboyant style) in the Entertainments National Service Association, directing performances for troops all over the European theater of operations. After the war, following her public defection from the Labour party, Jacob fell out of favor in England.
Jacob maintained her national profile through her autobiographical series of Me books, thirteen volumes (the last published the year of her death) that together explored virtually every aspect of her life, save her sexuality—which she never directly addressed in print. She died on August 26, 1964. Within the limitations of the light romance genre, Jacob created vivid women characters whose gutsy struggles against the petty tyrannies of marriage lead ultimately to heroic redemption.