Biographical Sketch
Editor and translator Elizabeth “Libby” Shub was born in Vilno, Poland, the daughter
of Samuel and Bessie Charney. In 1919, her family moved to the United States, where
they settled in New York and her father, writing as Shmuel Niger, worked as a
literary critic for the Yiddish newspaper
The Day.
Because her parents ran a literary salon in their home, Shub was exposed to Yiddish
literature and writers from an early age. She met author Isaac Bashevis Singer when
her father invited him to dinner at their house soon after Singer’s arrival in the
United States in 1935, and they developed a lasting friendship.
In 1965, after her marriage to Boris Shub ended in divorce, Elizabeth Shub began
working as a reader in the children’s department at Harper & Row Publishers
and soon became an associate editor there. She later worked at Charles Scribner’s
Sons (1966-68) and Macmillan Publishing Company (1968-75), also as an associate
editor of children’s books. She became senior editor at Greenwillow Books in 1975
and retired from that position in 1996.
It was Shub who suggested to Singer that he write a children’s book. He agreed to
write one if she would translate it from Yiddish to English; the result was
Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories (1966), which won a
Newbery Honor Book award, as did another collaboration, When
Shlemiel Went to Warsaw and Other Stories (1968). Although she is known
primarily as a translator of Singer’s stories for children, Shub also translated
some of his short stories for adults, as well as his novels The Estate (1970) and Enemies: A Love Story
(1972). In addition to works by Singer, Shub translated other folk tales and
children’s stories. Her translations of Theodor Fontane’s Sir
Ribbeck of Ribbeck of Havelland and About Wise
Men and Simpletons: Twelve Tales from Grimm won American Library
Association Notable Book awards in 1969 and 1971. Shub also wrote several original
books for children, including The White Stallion
(1982). She died in New York City on June 18, 2004, at the age of 89.
Scope and Contents
Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer worked closely with his translators,
particularly with Elizabeth Shub, who could read Yiddish, unlike many of his other
translators.
Manuscripts in the Shub papers include the translator’s working drafts of Singer’s
novels
The Estate and Enemies:
A Love Story, which Shub also edited, as well as his children’s stories
Alone in the Wild Forest, Elijah the Slave, The Fools of Chelm and Their
History, The Topsy-Turvy Emperor of
China, Why Noah Chose the Dove, and The Wicked City. Two of Singer’s short stories for
adults, A Friend of Kafka and Powers, are also present, as are a collection of
short stories, The Image and Other Stories, and an
essay on Hasidism.
Most of the manuscripts are typescripts with handwritten corrections by both Shub and
Singer, showing the collaborative nature of the translations.
Alone in the Wild
Forest is also represented by corrected Yiddish galley proofs and clippings from
its serialization in the Jewish Daily Forward. The Image and Other Stories is present only as a
corrected typesetting copy. Dorothea Straus’s translation of Powers was published
in Harper’s Magazine, and tearsheets from that
periodical have handwritten revisions by Shub.