He was born into a rabbinical family in Leoncin and spent three years of his adolescence in his grandfather's village, Bilgoraj, Poland, which made a deep impression on him. Here his father held a Beth Din and he himself studied Kabbalah. He then grew up in Warsaw where he made his career until going to New York in 1935. Singer adopted the name Bashevis (taken from his mother, Bas-Sheva) to avoid confusion with his famous brother Israel Joshua Singer. Singer received success early in his career with his novel Sotn in Goray in 1935. In the United States his writings were regularly serialized in the Yiddish daily Forward . His epic novel The Family Moskat (1950) inaugurated the acclaim he received widely in the United States and his books began to appear in English translation before they were published in Yiddish. His further popular novels included The Manor, The Magician of Lublin and The Slave. In 1978, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, the only Yiddish author to be so honored.

Bibliography:

BASHEVIS SINGER. Isaac. Alone in the wild forest. Pictures by Margot Zemach. Translated from the Yiddish by the author and Elizabeth Shub.New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux [1971] 79 p. illus. 24 cm.

BASHEVIS SINGER, Isaac. The collected stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer. Pp. viii, 610. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, c1982.

BASHEVIS SINGER, Isaac. A day of pleasure; stories of a boy growing up in Warsaw. With photos. by Roman Vishniac. Pp. 227. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux [1969]

BASHEVIS SINGER, Isaac. Enemies, a love story. [translated by Aliza Shevrin and Elizabeth Shub]. Pp. 280. London: Cape, 1972.

BASHEVIS SINGER, Isaac. The family Moskat. translated from the Yiddish by A. H. Gross. Pp. [9], 611. London: Secker & Warburg, 1966.

BASHEVIS SINGER, Isaac. The Estate. Pp. 374. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux [1969]

BASHEVIS SINGER, Isaac. The fools of Chelm and their history. Pictures by Uri Shulevitz. Translated by the author and Elizabeth Shub. Pp. 57. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux [1973]

BASHEVIS SINGER, Isaac. The King of Fields. Pp. 244. New York: New American Library, [1989], c1988.

BASHEVIS SINGER, Isaac. The Magician of Lublin. Translated from the Yiddish by Elaine Gottlieb and Joseph Singer. Pp. 246. New York: Noonday Press [1960]

BASHEVIS SINGER, Isaac. Nobel Lecture. Pp. 30. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1979.

BASHEVIS SINGER, Isaac. Reaches of heaven: a story of the Baal Shem Tov with twenty-three original etchings by Ira Moskowitz. Pp. 95. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, c1980.

BASHEVIS SINGER, Isaac. Satan in Goray. [translated by Jacob Sloan]. Pp. xi, 239. New York: Noonday Press, c1955.

BASHEVIS SINGER, Isaac. Shadows on the Hudson. Translated by Joseph Sherman.New York: Plume, 1999.

BASHEVIS SINGER, Isaac. Shosha. Pp. 277. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, c1978.

BASHEVIS SINGER, Isaac. Yentl the Yeshiva boy. Woodcuts by Antonio Frasconi; [translated from the Yiddish by Marion Magid and Elizabeth Pollet]. Pp. 58. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983, c1962.

Links:

The Nobel Prize Internet Archive

Isaac Bashevis Singer - Biography

American Masters - Isaac Bashevis Singer