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.