Sholom Aleichem was born into a large family of children in 1859 in Pereyaslav. When he was eleven years old, his mother died. His father remarried and Sholom was not fond of his stepmother. He portrayed this disapproval in his writing of The Curses of a Stepmother when he was fifteen. Later on in his life, Sholom became a tutor for a wealthy family. He falls in love with the eldest daughter Olga. They elope to be married and when her father dies, the two of them inherited his fortune. They later had four children and Sholom continued to write tons of novels and for a daily newspaper. However, he contracts tuberculosis and travels to America in 1906 to show up the American Yiddish Theater. In reality, his show was a disaster and so he returns to Europe. There he began writing memoirs. They were often mythologized versions of Jewish surroundings and of his own life.
Other work by Sholom Aleichem: Tevye the Dairyman Stories Railroad Stories |