Emma Lazarus Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Emma Lazarus was an American poet born 22 July 1849 in New York City. She is best known for writing the The New Colossus, a sonnet written on 2 November 1883 that in 1903 was engraved on a bronze tablet and put inside the base of the Statue of Liberty.Emma 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. She was assisted in large part by her father, who helped her write poems in her younger years. 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.
Besides writing her own poems she also wrote adaptions of German and Italian poems, notably those of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Heinrich Heine. Lazarus' interest in Jewish events was aroused after reading the George Eliot novel Daniel Deronda, and this was strengthened further by the Russian progrom 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, in 1883 and again in May 1885, after the death of her father that March. She returned to New York City seriously ill from her second trip in September 1887, and died two months later on 10 November, most likely from cancer.