The centuries-long Jewish presence in Poland could not pass unnoticed in Polish literature, yet writing about the Jews in Polish was for a long time the exclusive domain of Poles. This is why the image of the Jews created in that literature was far from objective and was founded mainly on stereotypes and cliches established over the ages, functioning completely inside Polish society's firm beliefs about Jewish traditions, life, and customs. Even if an author aimed to re-evaluate prevailing opinion about Jews, he too often had equally erroneous ideas, and would end up strengthening existing stereotypes, whether he intended to or not.

A number of literary critics have noted that Polish literature tended to portray the Jewish intelligentsia, to which it had easy access, while Yiddish literature tended to portray the Jewish masses, to which it had easy access. The world of ordinary Jews, inhabitants of the shtetl or the urban poor, was described by Jewish writers rather than by Poles. Jewish spirituality remained beyond the interest and understanding of Polish writers. Assumptions that are based on only superficial observations, without any solid basis of knowledge or understanding, tend to be mistaken, so it is small wonder that Polish literature never gave a very accurate picture of Jewish life.

The first work of a Polish Jew in Polish was published in 1782, and a relatively large number of Jews became very active in Polish literature and literary criticism from the nineteenth century. Since Polish Jewry was almost entirely Yiddishspeaking, however, it was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that the increase in the number of Jews writing in Polish became marked.

Those Jews who wrote about Polish literature in the mid-nineteenth century did not generally deal with Jewish topics. When they did, as for example in the works of Julian Klaczko, Henryk Merzbach, and Aleksander Kraushar, they abandoned the subject very quickly, perhaps as part of their quest for assimilation.