Henry Roth Collection

Writer Henry Roth is best known for his literary classic Call it Sleep, published in 1934 when Roth was twenty-eight. Through the eyes of a young boy, the autobiographical novel chronicles the Lower East Side in the early decades of the twentieth century, then home to many Eastern European Jewish immigrants. The novel was well received at publication, but enjoyed even greater acclaim in the 1960s when it was rediscovered and critics labeled it a literary classic. Roth published very infrequently after the publication of Call it Sleep until the 1990s. In 1994, A Star Shines Over Mt. Morris Park appeared, the first novel in the Mercy of a Rude Stream series. According to novelist Leonard Michaels, the publication of the autobiographical series, which follows the life of protagonist Ira Stigman, was akin to J.D. Salinger writing a sequel to A Catcher in the Rye.

As a writer, Henry Roth drew heavily upon the events of his own life. He was born in Tyszmenicz, Galicia (now in the Ukraine) on February 8, 1906. Roth’s father immigrated to New York City in 1907 and his mother followed with rest of the family in 1908. They settled in the Lower East Side where they lived until 1914 when the family relocated to Harlem. Roth began writing while a student at the City College of New York. While there, Roth met poet and literature professor Eda Lou Walton. Walton supported him financially while he finished school and the novel that would be Call it Sleep in 1928. They maintained their relationship until 1938 when Roth met his future wife, composer Muriel Parker. Parker and Roth married in 1939.

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Henry and Muriel Roth moved to Boston and then to Maine in 1946. Roth held different jobs including cutting wood for a paper company and working for the Augusta State Mental Hospital as an attendant. Muriel Roth taught at an elementary school. Eventually the two purchased a farm in Maine where they raised two sons and Roth bred ducks and geese. The renewed interest in Call it Sleep in the 1960s enabled the Roths to travel and eventually to settle in Albuquerque, New Mexico where Muriel Roth began to compose again and Henry Roth began to write again. In 1979, Roth commenced a decade’s worth of writing that evolved into the Mercy of a Rude Stream series. Roth did much of this writing while severely debilitated by arthritis.

Muriel Roth died in 1990 and Henry Roth followed her in 1995 having seen the first two volumes of the Mercy of a Rude Stream series published.

Note: For more detailed biographical information about Henry Roth, see the finding aid for the Henry Roth Papers (collection number P-702).