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His early life was in the East End of London, and he was a teacher in the Jewish Free School there.
He wrote a very influential novel Children of the Ghetto,(1892), and his play The Melting Pot was a hit in the USA in 1908-1909. He also wrote mystery works, such as The Big Bow Mystery.
His friends included Jerome K. Jerome and H. G. Wells
Zangwill, an English Jew, founded an organization called "the Jewish Territorialists Organization" in 1905. The aim of the Jewish Territorialists Organization was to create a Jewish homeland in whatever possible territory in the world (and not necessarily in what today is the state of Israel). Zangwill died in 1926 after trying to build the Jewish state both in places in Canada and Australia, as well as in Mesopotamia, Cyrenaica and Uganda.
Israel Zangwill was the father of Oliver L. Zangwill, a prominent British psychologist.