Born in 1849 to a prosperous Jewish-Portuguese
family in New York City, Emma Lazarus began writing as a teenager.
In 1886, her father published her first book of poems, entitled
Poems and Translations.
Lazarus was a contemporary of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who admired her
writing and helped make Lazarus part of an elite circle of American
writers. Lazarus was an advocate for Jewish immigrants escaping
persecution in Europe and Russia, and many of her poems reflect
that concern. Lazarus died of Hodgkin’s disease at age 38. Her poem
"The New Colossus," which in 1904 was etched on the base of the
Statue of Liberty, became one of the most often quoted poems in the
English Language.
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