![]() She also spoke out in favor of creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine. She helped found the Hebrew Technical Institute in New York, in order to provide vocational training for new Jewish immigrants. In addition to writing, by the early 1880s, Lazarus was speaking out against anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe, and working with the Jewish refugees who immigrated to the United States at that time. Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons) (Photo: Manuscript of the sonnet "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus, dated 1883. In 1903, it was inscribed on a plaque that remains on display in the museum on Liberty Island. In 1901, her friend Georgina Schuyler found the poem. In the poem, Lazarus referred to the Statue of Liberty as “Mother of Exiles,” and wrote, “Give me your tired, your poor,/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/The wretched refuse of your teeming shore./Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,/I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” “The New Colossus” became famous only after Lazarus’s death. (Although the statue was a gift from the people of France, American contributors paid for the platform.) ![]() It was created to sell at an auction to raise money to build the pedestal on which the Statue of Liberty would stand in New York harbor. Lazarus wrote “The New Colossus,” the poem for which she is best-known today, in 1883. She hailed writers she believed represented this new aesthetic, including Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. She believed that a unique American aesthetic was developing, apart from the European. ![]() In addition to writing, she received critical acclaim for translating the work of the Heinrich Heine, a German Jewish poet.Įmma also wrote commentary about the literature of her era. She also published a book of poetry, called Admetus and Other Poems, in 1871, and a novel, called Alide: An Episode in Goethe’s Life, in 1874. She published more than 50 poems in popular magazines, including Lippincott’s and The Century. Lazarus was well known during her lifetime. During her lifetime, Lazarus met with other famous writers, including Robert Browning, William Morris and Henry James. Two years later, Lazarus sent her writing to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was sufficiently impressed to become her mentor. In 1866, her father published a book of her poetry called Poems and Translations Written Between the Ages of Fourteen and Seventeen. Lazarus' parents supported her interest in poetry. ![]() Lazarus received a classical education and the family moved in high society, which included owning a mansion in Newport, Rhode Island. Of Portuguese descent, the family was wealthy, earning its fortune in the sugar refining business. The family was descended from early Jewish settlers in America. She was the fourth of seven children born to Moses and Esther Nathan Lazarus. It features the famous lines "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Early LifeĮmma Lazarus was born on Jin New York City. Her poem "The New Colossus" was chosen to be displayed on the base of the Statue of Liberty. She displayed an early talent for poetry, and attracted the notice of Ralph Waldo Emerson with her first book. Emma Lazarus was born into a wealthy New York family that was descended from Sephardic Jewish Americans.
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