British author Israel Zangwill (1864–1926), the son of Eastern-European Jewish immigrants, schooled in Spitalfields, became known as 'the Jewish Dickens' or 'the Dickens of the Ghetto'. His best-known novel 'Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People' (1892) was highly influential and his play 'The Melting Pot' popularised this term to describe the American absorption of multi-national immigrants and was praised by President Roosevelt. Zangwill was the first President of the Ben Uri Society from 1921–24 and presided over the 'Grand Public Welcome' given for Glicenstein when he visited England the same year (his bronze of Zangwill was acquired for the Society in 1925). This plaque by an unidentified artist represents Zangwill in middle age (contrasting with portraits by Alfred Wolmark and Jacob Kramer in the Ben Uri Collection of the writer towards the end of his life); it is signed with the initials K. W. P. and was presented to the Collection by Mrs R. Cohen in 1933. In 1935 Ben Uri mounted an Israel Zangwill Memorial Exhibition in which this bronze was also included.