Emma Lazarus (July 22, 1859 – November 19, 1887) was an American poet born in New York City.
She is best known for writing The New Colossus, a sonnet written on 2 November 1883 that was engraved on a bronze tablet and put inside the base of the Statue of Liberty in 1903.
Lazarus was the fourth of seven children of Esther and Moses Lazarus. She became very knowledgeable in many things, including American and European literature, and also in several languages, including German, French and Italian. Her writings aroused the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson, at the time a prominent American poet and essayist, who corresponded with her up until his death in 1882.
She wrote her own original poems and many adaptations of German and Italian poems , notably those of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Heinrich Heine. Lazarus' latent Judaism was aroused after reading the George Eliot novel Daniel Deronda, and this was further strengthened by the Russian pogroms in the early 1880s. This led Lazarus to write articles on the subject and to begin translating the works of Jewish poets into English.
She traveled twice to Europe, first in May 1885 after the death of her father in March, and again in September 1887. She returned to New York City seriously ill after her second trip and died two months later on 19 November 1887, most likely from cancer.
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