Emma Lazarus (1849–1887) was an American poet from New York, the author of The New Colossus, the sonnet engraved on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. A translator and essayist, she was also one of the first prominent voices for Jewish refugees in America.
A New York family
Emma Lazarus was born in New York City on 22 July 1849 into a wealthy Sephardic Jewish family whose ancestors had come to America in colonial times. She was educated at home by private tutors and learned French, German and Italian.
Her father had her first collection, Poems and Translations, printed in 1866 when she was seventeen. It caught the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who became her mentor.
Writer and activist
She published poems, a novel and translations of Heine and of medieval Hebrew poets. The pogroms in the Russian Empire from 1881 and the arrival of Jewish refugees in New York changed her life.
She worked to help the immigrants at Ward's Island, wrote essays such as Epistle to the Hebrews and argued for a Jewish homeland, before the founding of political Zionism.
The New Colossus
In 1883 she wrote The New Colossus for an auction raising money for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, imagining the statue as a 'Mother of Exiles' welcoming the poor of the world.
She travelled to Europe in 1883 and 1885, then fell ill with cancer and died in New York on 19 November 1887, aged thirty-eight.
Anecdotes
Emerson's anthology
Emerson encouraged Lazarus for years, but did not include her poems in his anthology Parnassus (1874), which hurt her deeply.
A plaque in 1903
The New Colossus was almost forgotten after the auction. In 1903 her friend Georgina Schuyler had it engraved on a bronze plaque fixed inside the pedestal of the statue.
Frequently asked questions
What is The New Colossus?
A sonnet of 1883 in which the Statue of Liberty becomes a 'Mother of Exiles' welcoming immigrants.
Where is the poem displayed?
On a bronze plaque placed in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in 1903, now shown in the statue's museum.
Who influenced Emma Lazarus?
Ralph Waldo Emerson, her mentor, and the poets she translated, Heine and the Hebrew poets of medieval Spain.