Throughout their presence in England, there have existed two distinct, highly visible groups who share a common ancestry and culture, one inhabited by mythical Jews and the other by Jews of reality. The existence of the second society has oftentimes been dependent on the perceptions that the English people had of the first. Perceptions that have been molded by some of England's greatest writers, including Theodorus, the seventh century archbishop of Canterbury, through Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dickens, Stoker and unto the present day.

The mythical Jew exists in the minds, beliefs, rumors and literature of England. He is Fagan, the Jew of Dickens, he of the hooked nose, dark complexion, and worn clothes, the blood sucking Eastern European Dracula of Stoker, he is Shakespeare's Shylock, the money lending usurer seeking his "pound of flesh", and he is Karl Marx's Capitalist and David Irving's Communist.

The mythical Jew rejected and betrayed Jesus Christ, murdered innocent Christian children in order to have devilish ingredients for Passover meals, poisoned wells so as to cause Black Death, was the author of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, fabricated the Holocaust, owns all the banks and newspapers, and controls the movie industry.

Much is known about the mythical Jew, the leading writers of England have been describing him, his appearance, his morals, his deceptive and manipulative work ethic, his methods and his crimes since the fourth Century. While the mythical Jew never existed, the Jews of reality do exist. Such Jews live, work, study, pray to their God, and somehow manage to exist despite society's periods of overwhelming mistrust and hatred.

The Jew of reality, as a result of the crimes attributed to the mythical Jew, has been segregated, punished, fined, imprisoned, tortured, robbed, murdered, and expelled. Yet slowly over the centuries the Jew of reality has emerged as a welcomed, honored and respected member of English society. However even today the mythical Jew exists; still being accused of the crimes of murder, still possessed with the despicable personality traits of the worst of history's mythical Jew.

This paper will endeavor to breech the fog of public perception and describe the history of the two societies of Jews, the mythical and the real. The basis for this perception is the portrayal of English Jews as described in the literature of England, from the earliest religious writings of the Middle Ages, through the Victorian and Elizabethan eras, into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. My thesis contends these English authors were describing members of the society of mythical Jews rather than the segregated Jews of reality living on Jewry Street.