Rubinstein, Harold Frederick

Harold Frederick Rubinstein was a British solicitor, playwright, and editor. He was born in 1891 into an old Anglo-Jewish family and founded the London law firm of Rubinstein, Nash & Co., which is now known as Rubinstein, Callingham, Polden & Gale. The firm specialised in literary cases and defended Radclyffe Hall’s 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness. Rubinstein also wrote plays, including The Dickens of Gray’s Inn (1931), Israel Set Free (1936), Unearthly Gentleman (1965), and Shylock’s End (1970). Furthermore, he edited Four Jewish Plays (1948). His son Michael Rubinstein also worked as a solicitor and specialised in defending authors and publishers: in 1960, he acted for Penguin Books in the obscenity trial of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Hilary Rubinstein, another son, was a well-known literary agent, publisher, and author who compiled the anthology The Complete Insomniac (1974).

Harold Frederick Rubinstein died in 1975.