920 O'Farrell Street: A Jewish Girlhood in Old San Francisco

by Harriet Lane Levy, Charlene Akers (Introduction)

Originally published in 1937 in the later years of her extraordinary life, Harriet Lane Levy's memoirs of her childhood in San Francisco during the late 1800s give us a rare view into the traditional life and manners of an upper-middle-class Jewish family of the era. With sly wit and a writing style critics compared to Jane Austen's, Levy vividly portrays an often stifling world of parlors and sitting rooms, maids and cooks, family intrigue and neighborhood pretensions, eased by the warmth of family affections and Levy's own independent spirit.