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On November 19, 1887, Emma Lazarus, American poet, died in New York at the age of 38. From the article:
"Poet Emma Lazarus wrote the lines "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" which are inscribed on pedestal on which the Statue of Liberty stands.
Who Was Emma Lazarus?
Emma Lazarus was born into a wealthy New York family that was descended from Sephardic Jewish Americans. She displayed an early talent for poetry, and attracted the notice of Ralph Waldo Emerson with her first book. Her poem "The New Colossus" was chosen to be displayed on the base of the Statue of Liberty. It features the famous lines "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."
Early Life
Emma Lazarus was born on July 22, 1849 in New York City. She was the fourth of seven children born to Moses and Esther Nathan Lazarus. The family was descended from early Jewish settlers in America. Of Portuguese descent, the family was wealthy, earning its fortune in the sugar refining business. Lazarus received a classical education and the family moved in high society, which included owning a mansion in Newport, Rhode Island.
Poet & Translator
Lazarus' parents supported her interest in poetry. In 1866, her father published a book of her poetry called Poems and Translations Written Between the Ages of Fourteen and Seventeen. Two years later, Lazarus sent her writing to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was sufficiently impressed to become her mentor. During her lifetime, Lazarus met with other famous writers, including Robert Browning, William Morris and Henry James.
Lazarus was well known during her lifetime. She published more than 50 poems in popular magazines, including Lippincott’s and The Century. She also published a book of poetry, called Admetus and Other Poems, in 1871, and a novel, called Alide: An Episode in Goethe’s Life, in 1874. In addition to writing, she received critical acclaim for translating the work of the Heinrich Heine, a German Jewish poet.
Emma also wrote commentary about the literature of her era. She believed that a unique American aesthetic was developing, apart from the European. She hailed writers she believed represented this new aesthetic, including Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
“The New Colossus”
Lazarus wrote “The New Colossus,” the poem for which she is best-known today, in 1883. It was created to sell at an auction to raise money to build the pedestal on which the Statue of Liberty would stand in New York harbor. (Although the statue was a gift from the people of France, American contributors paid for the platform.)
In the poem, Lazarus referred to the Statue of Liberty as “Mother of Exiles,” and wrote, “Give me your tired, your poor,/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/The wretched refuse of your teeming shore./Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,/I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” “The New Colossus” became famous only after Lazarus’s death. In 1901, her friend Georgina Schuyler found the poem. In 1903, it was inscribed on a plaque that remains on display in the museum on Liberty Island.
Advocate
In addition to writing, by the early 1880s, Lazarus was speaking out against anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe, and working with the Jewish refugees who immigrated to the United States at that time. She helped found the Hebrew Technical Institute in New York, in order to provide vocational training for new Jewish immigrants. She also spoke out in favor of creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Untimely Demise
On November 19, 1887, when she was 38 years old, Lazarus died in New York, most likely from Hodgkin’s lymphoma."
"Poet Emma Lazarus wrote the lines "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" which are inscribed on pedestal on which the Statue of Liberty stands.
Who Was Emma Lazarus?
Emma Lazarus was born into a wealthy New York family that was descended from Sephardic Jewish Americans. She displayed an early talent for poetry, and attracted the notice of Ralph Waldo Emerson with her first book. Her poem "The New Colossus" was chosen to be displayed on the base of the Statue of Liberty. It features the famous lines "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."
Early Life
Emma Lazarus was born on July 22, 1849 in New York City. She was the fourth of seven children born to Moses and Esther Nathan Lazarus. The family was descended from early Jewish settlers in America. Of Portuguese descent, the family was wealthy, earning its fortune in the sugar refining business. Lazarus received a classical education and the family moved in high society, which included owning a mansion in Newport, Rhode Island.
Poet & Translator
Lazarus' parents supported her interest in poetry. In 1866, her father published a book of her poetry called Poems and Translations Written Between the Ages of Fourteen and Seventeen. Two years later, Lazarus sent her writing to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was sufficiently impressed to become her mentor. During her lifetime, Lazarus met with other famous writers, including Robert Browning, William Morris and Henry James.
Lazarus was well known during her lifetime. She published more than 50 poems in popular magazines, including Lippincott’s and The Century. She also published a book of poetry, called Admetus and Other Poems, in 1871, and a novel, called Alide: An Episode in Goethe’s Life, in 1874. In addition to writing, she received critical acclaim for translating the work of the Heinrich Heine, a German Jewish poet.
Emma also wrote commentary about the literature of her era. She believed that a unique American aesthetic was developing, apart from the European. She hailed writers she believed represented this new aesthetic, including Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
“The New Colossus”
Lazarus wrote “The New Colossus,” the poem for which she is best-known today, in 1883. It was created to sell at an auction to raise money to build the pedestal on which the Statue of Liberty would stand in New York harbor. (Although the statue was a gift from the people of France, American contributors paid for the platform.)
In the poem, Lazarus referred to the Statue of Liberty as “Mother of Exiles,” and wrote, “Give me your tired, your poor,/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/The wretched refuse of your teeming shore./Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,/I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” “The New Colossus” became famous only after Lazarus’s death. In 1901, her friend Georgina Schuyler found the poem. In 1903, it was inscribed on a plaque that remains on display in the museum on Liberty Island.
Advocate
In addition to writing, by the early 1880s, Lazarus was speaking out against anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe, and working with the Jewish refugees who immigrated to the United States at that time. She helped found the Hebrew Technical Institute in New York, in order to provide vocational training for new Jewish immigrants. She also spoke out in favor of creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Untimely Demise
On November 19, 1887, when she was 38 years old, Lazarus died in New York, most likely from Hodgkin’s lymphoma."
Emma Lazarus
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Who Was Emma Lazarus? The Sephardic Diaspora pt. 8
Brief lecture on the life and work of Emma Lazarus, author of the poem The New Colossus, enshrined at the base of the Statue of Liberty.
Thank you my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that on November 19, 1887 American Jewish Poet Emma Lazarus died in New York at the age of 38.
Who Was Emma Lazarus? The Sephardic Diaspora pt. 8
Brief lecture on the life and work of Emma Lazarus, author of the poem The New Colossus, enshrined at the base of the Statue of Liberty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOADcKX3FaQ
Images;
1. November 2 The New Colossus
2. Emma Lazarus
3. The 1903 bronze plaque located in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty
4. Emma Lazarus by Esther Schor
1. Background from [[https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/emma-lazarus]}
Emma Lazarus 1849-1887
By Kerri Lee Alexander, NWHM Fellow | 2018-2020
As a Jewish American writer and activist, Emma Lazarus has been widely recognized for her work. However, she is most famous for her poem, “The New Colossus,” that is engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Her words; “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” are almost as well-known as the Statue itself.
Emma Lazarus was born on July 22, 1849 in New York City. The fourth of seven children, Lazarus was born to a wealthy Sephardic Jewish family of Portuguese descent. Her father, Moses, was a successful sugar merchant who made certain his children got the best education. Lazarus and her siblings studied with private tutors and learned multiple languages including German, French, and Italian. Lazarus excelled in academics, and by the time she was seventeen, she had already written a book of poems called Poems and Translations: Written Between the Ages of Fourteen and Sixteen. Her father was one of her biggest supporters and he decided to publish her book of poems for “private circulation.” Shortly after, Lazarus decided to send a copy of her first book to the famous writer Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson quickly became her mentor and when she published her next book of poetry in 1871, she dedicated the main poem, “To My Friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson.” This book, entitled Admetus and Other Poems, received critical acclaim.
Three years later, Lazarus published her first and only novel called Alide: An Episode in Goethe's Life based on the autobiography of the German writer Goethe. The only other work of fiction that Lazarus published was a short story in 1878 in Scribner’s Monthly entitled “The Eleventh Hour.” For the next decade, her poems were published in American magazines, including her poem called “Progress and Poverty” that was published in the New York Times in 1881. That same year, she published translations of poetry written by German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine. She published the first one called Poems and Ballads of Heinrich Heine in 1881 and published Songs of a Semite: The Dance to Death and Other Poems the following year.
As Lazarus continued to write, she used her poems and essays to speak out against the persecution of Jews in Europe and growing anti-Semitism in the United States. She publicly proclaimed her identity as a Jewish poet and advocated for Jewish issues internationally. Lazarus wrote in various publications promoting Zionism and a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In addition to her writing, she also met with immigrants and refugees, volunteered at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and helped establish the Hebrew Technical Institute in New York to provide Jewish immigrants with vocational training. In 1883, Lazarus formed the Society for the Improvement and Colonization of East European Jews. That same year, she wrote “The New Colossus” to be presented at auction to raise money for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The organizers decided to print the poem in the Catalogue of the Pedestal Fund Art Loan Exhibition at the National Academy of Design to inspire continued work on the statue.
Following her work for the auction, Lazarus began traveling to Europe to participate in social reform. During her first trip, she met with Robert Browning, William Morris, and Jewish leaders, which she documented in her essay, “A Day in Surrey with William Morris.” She traveled to Europe again from May 1885 until September 1887. Unfortunately, when Lazarus returned New York City she was very sick. Emma Lazarus died on November 19, 1887.
Sixteen years after her death, Lazarus’ most famous poem “The New Colossus,” was engraved on a plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. In 1951, the Emma Lazarus Federation of Jewish Woman's Clubs was formed, however the organization disbanded in 1989."
2. Background from {[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/emma-lazarus]}
Emma Lazarus was born in New York City [July 22, 1849] to a wealthy family and educated by private tutors. She began writing and translating poetry as a teenager and was publishing translations of German poems by the 1860s. Her father privately printed her first work in 1866 and the next year, her first collection, Poems and Translations (1867), appeared from a commercial press. The book gained the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson, among others. Over the next decade, Lazarus published a second volume of poetry, Admetus and Other Poems (1871); the novel Alide: An Episode in Goethe’s Life (1874); and a play in verse, The Spagnoletto (1876). Reading George Eliot’s novel Daniel Deronda, with its exploration of Jewish identity, stirred Lazarus to consider her own heritage. In the 1880s, she took up the cause—through both poetry and prose—against the persecution of Jews in Russia, publishing a polemical pamphlet The Century (1882) and Songs of a Semite: The Dance to Death and Other Poems (1882), one of the first literary works to explore the struggles of Jewish Americans.
Lazarus was one of the first successful and highly visible Jewish American authors. She advocated for Jewish refugees and argued for the creation of a Jewish homeland before the concept of Zionism was in wide circulation. After the publication of Songs of a Semite, she traveled to England and France and met and befriended poets and writers such as Robert Browning and William Morris. After her return to the United States, she was commissioned to write a poem to help raise funds for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. She initially declined and then wrote a sonnet commemorating the plight of immigrants. Lines from that 1883 sonnet, “The New Colossus,” were engraved on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in 1903.
After her death, the scope of Lazarus’s life and career was obscured by the fame of “The New Colossus.” There have been recent attempts to revitalize scholarship and interest in her work, including a volume of selected poems from the Library of America and a biography, Emma Lazarus (2006), by Esther Schor.
FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs SMSgt Lawrence McCarter SPC Michael Duricko, Ph.D GySgt Thomas Vick SGT Denny Espinosa SSG Stephen Rogerson SPC Matthew Lamb LTC (Join to see) LTC Greg Henning Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. PO1 William "Chip" Nagel PO2 (Join to see) SSG Franklin Briant SPC Woody Bullard TSgt David L. SMSgt David A Asbury MSgt Paul Connors
Who Was Emma Lazarus? The Sephardic Diaspora pt. 8
Brief lecture on the life and work of Emma Lazarus, author of the poem The New Colossus, enshrined at the base of the Statue of Liberty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOADcKX3FaQ
Images;
1. November 2 The New Colossus
2. Emma Lazarus
3. The 1903 bronze plaque located in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty
4. Emma Lazarus by Esther Schor
1. Background from [[https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/emma-lazarus]}
Emma Lazarus 1849-1887
By Kerri Lee Alexander, NWHM Fellow | 2018-2020
As a Jewish American writer and activist, Emma Lazarus has been widely recognized for her work. However, she is most famous for her poem, “The New Colossus,” that is engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Her words; “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” are almost as well-known as the Statue itself.
Emma Lazarus was born on July 22, 1849 in New York City. The fourth of seven children, Lazarus was born to a wealthy Sephardic Jewish family of Portuguese descent. Her father, Moses, was a successful sugar merchant who made certain his children got the best education. Lazarus and her siblings studied with private tutors and learned multiple languages including German, French, and Italian. Lazarus excelled in academics, and by the time she was seventeen, she had already written a book of poems called Poems and Translations: Written Between the Ages of Fourteen and Sixteen. Her father was one of her biggest supporters and he decided to publish her book of poems for “private circulation.” Shortly after, Lazarus decided to send a copy of her first book to the famous writer Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson quickly became her mentor and when she published her next book of poetry in 1871, she dedicated the main poem, “To My Friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson.” This book, entitled Admetus and Other Poems, received critical acclaim.
Three years later, Lazarus published her first and only novel called Alide: An Episode in Goethe's Life based on the autobiography of the German writer Goethe. The only other work of fiction that Lazarus published was a short story in 1878 in Scribner’s Monthly entitled “The Eleventh Hour.” For the next decade, her poems were published in American magazines, including her poem called “Progress and Poverty” that was published in the New York Times in 1881. That same year, she published translations of poetry written by German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine. She published the first one called Poems and Ballads of Heinrich Heine in 1881 and published Songs of a Semite: The Dance to Death and Other Poems the following year.
As Lazarus continued to write, she used her poems and essays to speak out against the persecution of Jews in Europe and growing anti-Semitism in the United States. She publicly proclaimed her identity as a Jewish poet and advocated for Jewish issues internationally. Lazarus wrote in various publications promoting Zionism and a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In addition to her writing, she also met with immigrants and refugees, volunteered at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and helped establish the Hebrew Technical Institute in New York to provide Jewish immigrants with vocational training. In 1883, Lazarus formed the Society for the Improvement and Colonization of East European Jews. That same year, she wrote “The New Colossus” to be presented at auction to raise money for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The organizers decided to print the poem in the Catalogue of the Pedestal Fund Art Loan Exhibition at the National Academy of Design to inspire continued work on the statue.
Following her work for the auction, Lazarus began traveling to Europe to participate in social reform. During her first trip, she met with Robert Browning, William Morris, and Jewish leaders, which she documented in her essay, “A Day in Surrey with William Morris.” She traveled to Europe again from May 1885 until September 1887. Unfortunately, when Lazarus returned New York City she was very sick. Emma Lazarus died on November 19, 1887.
Sixteen years after her death, Lazarus’ most famous poem “The New Colossus,” was engraved on a plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. In 1951, the Emma Lazarus Federation of Jewish Woman's Clubs was formed, however the organization disbanded in 1989."
2. Background from {[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/emma-lazarus]}
Emma Lazarus was born in New York City [July 22, 1849] to a wealthy family and educated by private tutors. She began writing and translating poetry as a teenager and was publishing translations of German poems by the 1860s. Her father privately printed her first work in 1866 and the next year, her first collection, Poems and Translations (1867), appeared from a commercial press. The book gained the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson, among others. Over the next decade, Lazarus published a second volume of poetry, Admetus and Other Poems (1871); the novel Alide: An Episode in Goethe’s Life (1874); and a play in verse, The Spagnoletto (1876). Reading George Eliot’s novel Daniel Deronda, with its exploration of Jewish identity, stirred Lazarus to consider her own heritage. In the 1880s, she took up the cause—through both poetry and prose—against the persecution of Jews in Russia, publishing a polemical pamphlet The Century (1882) and Songs of a Semite: The Dance to Death and Other Poems (1882), one of the first literary works to explore the struggles of Jewish Americans.
Lazarus was one of the first successful and highly visible Jewish American authors. She advocated for Jewish refugees and argued for the creation of a Jewish homeland before the concept of Zionism was in wide circulation. After the publication of Songs of a Semite, she traveled to England and France and met and befriended poets and writers such as Robert Browning and William Morris. After her return to the United States, she was commissioned to write a poem to help raise funds for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. She initially declined and then wrote a sonnet commemorating the plight of immigrants. Lines from that 1883 sonnet, “The New Colossus,” were engraved on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in 1903.
After her death, the scope of Lazarus’s life and career was obscured by the fame of “The New Colossus.” There have been recent attempts to revitalize scholarship and interest in her work, including a volume of selected poems from the Library of America and a biography, Emma Lazarus (2006), by Esther Schor.
FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs SMSgt Lawrence McCarter SPC Michael Duricko, Ph.D GySgt Thomas Vick SGT Denny Espinosa SSG Stephen Rogerson SPC Matthew Lamb LTC (Join to see) LTC Greg Henning Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. PO1 William "Chip" Nagel PO2 (Join to see) SSG Franklin Briant SPC Woody Bullard TSgt David L. SMSgt David A Asbury MSgt Paul Connors
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The Emma Lazarus Project is a three year multi-faceted initiative that explores the story of Emma Lazarus, a fifth-generation American Jew caught in an impor...
The Emma Lazarus Project
The Emma Lazarus Project is a three year multi-faceted initiative that explores the story of Emma Lazarus, a fifth-generation American Jew caught in an important turning point in American and Jewish History. The initiative - including the exhibit, curriculum and poetry contest - will not just redress omissions, but will exhibit a fuller, richer, more historically-grounded picture of Emma’s life than has yet been presented to a public audience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChhnZLO32mo
Images:
1. A portrait of Emma Lazarus. Engraving by T. Johnson, 1872
2. Emma Lazarus image with signature
3. Emma Lazarus partially seated
Background from {[https://poets.org/poet/emma-lazarus]}
A descendant of Sephardic Jews who immigrated to the United States from Portugal around the time of the American Revolution, Emma Lazarus was born in New York City on July 22, 1849. Before Lazarus, the only Jewish poets published in the United States were humor and hymnal writers. Her book Songs of a Semite was the first collection of poetry to explore Jewish-American identity while struggling with the problems of modern poetics.
Her family was wealthy, and Lazarus was educated at home, acquiring a knowledge of Greek and Latin classics, as well as the modern literature of Germany, Italy, and France. Lazarus developed an affinity for verse at an early age. As a teenager, she began translating the poems of Victor Hugo, Heinrich Heine, Alexandre Dumas, and Friedrich Schiller.
Lazarus began publishing poems in the 1860s and 1870s, including translations of German poems. In 1866, her father arranged for the poems and translations she wrote between the ages of fourteen and sixteen to be privately printed, and the following year a commercially published volume titled Poems and Translations followed. The work attracted the attention of poets and critics, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, who became her friend and mentor.
Lazarus published another volume of poetry, Admetus and Other Poems (1871); a novel, Alide: An Episode in Goethe's Life (1874); and a verse drama, The Spagnoletto (1876), before her interests in Jewish identity and culture were reflected in her work. After reading George Eliot's 1876 novel Daniel Deronda, which explores Jewish ancestory in Victorian society, Lazarus began to translate medieval Hebrew poetry from the German. News of the Russian pogroms fueled her interest. In 1881, she witnessed firsthand the tumultuous arrival of exiled refugees into the United States. The following year, she published a polemic in The Century, as well as another collection of verse, Songs of a Semite: The Dance to Death and Other Poems.
Following the publication of Songs of a Semite, Lazarus wrote several prose pieces concerned with the historical and political interests of the Jewish people, and travelled to France and England, where she met and befriended literary figures, such as Robert Browning and William Morris.
FYI LTC John Shaw SPC Diana D. LTC Hillary Luton
1SG Steven ImermanSSG Pete FishGySgt Gary CordeiroPO1 H Gene LawrenceSPC Chris Bayner-CwikSgt Jim BelanusSGM Bill FrazerMSG Tom EarleySSgt Marian MitchellSGT Michael HearnPO2 Frederick DunnSP5 Dennis LobergerCPO John BjorgeSGT Randell RoseSSG Jimmy CernichSGT Denny EspinosaMSG Fred Bucci
After returning from Europe, Lazarus was asked for an original poem to be auctioned off as a fundraiser for the building of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Though she initially declined, Lazarus later used the opportunity to express the plight of refugee immigrants, who she cared greatly about. Her resulting sonnet, "The New Colossus", includes the iconic lines "Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," and is inscribed on a plaque on the pedestal of the monument.
In 1884, Lazarus fell ill, most likely from Hodgkin's lymphoma. After her father's death the following year, she travelled again, hoping an encounter with a new country would help her regain some of her strength. She visited Italy for the first time, followed by England and France, but soon returned to the United States when her illness worsened. She died a few months later on November 17, 1887."
FYI LTC John Shaw SPC Diana D. LTC Hillary Luton
1SG Steven ImermanSSG Pete FishGySgt Gary CordeiroPO1 H Gene LawrenceSPC Chris Bayner-CwikSgt Jim BelanusSGM Bill FrazerMSG Tom EarleySSgt Marian MitchellSGT Michael HearnPO2 Frederick DunnSP5 Dennis LobergerCPO John BjorgeSGT Randell RoseSSG Jimmy CernichSGT Denny EspinosaMSG Fred Bucci
The Emma Lazarus Project is a three year multi-faceted initiative that explores the story of Emma Lazarus, a fifth-generation American Jew caught in an important turning point in American and Jewish History. The initiative - including the exhibit, curriculum and poetry contest - will not just redress omissions, but will exhibit a fuller, richer, more historically-grounded picture of Emma’s life than has yet been presented to a public audience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChhnZLO32mo
Images:
1. A portrait of Emma Lazarus. Engraving by T. Johnson, 1872
2. Emma Lazarus image with signature
3. Emma Lazarus partially seated
Background from {[https://poets.org/poet/emma-lazarus]}
A descendant of Sephardic Jews who immigrated to the United States from Portugal around the time of the American Revolution, Emma Lazarus was born in New York City on July 22, 1849. Before Lazarus, the only Jewish poets published in the United States were humor and hymnal writers. Her book Songs of a Semite was the first collection of poetry to explore Jewish-American identity while struggling with the problems of modern poetics.
Her family was wealthy, and Lazarus was educated at home, acquiring a knowledge of Greek and Latin classics, as well as the modern literature of Germany, Italy, and France. Lazarus developed an affinity for verse at an early age. As a teenager, she began translating the poems of Victor Hugo, Heinrich Heine, Alexandre Dumas, and Friedrich Schiller.
Lazarus began publishing poems in the 1860s and 1870s, including translations of German poems. In 1866, her father arranged for the poems and translations she wrote between the ages of fourteen and sixteen to be privately printed, and the following year a commercially published volume titled Poems and Translations followed. The work attracted the attention of poets and critics, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, who became her friend and mentor.
Lazarus published another volume of poetry, Admetus and Other Poems (1871); a novel, Alide: An Episode in Goethe's Life (1874); and a verse drama, The Spagnoletto (1876), before her interests in Jewish identity and culture were reflected in her work. After reading George Eliot's 1876 novel Daniel Deronda, which explores Jewish ancestory in Victorian society, Lazarus began to translate medieval Hebrew poetry from the German. News of the Russian pogroms fueled her interest. In 1881, she witnessed firsthand the tumultuous arrival of exiled refugees into the United States. The following year, she published a polemic in The Century, as well as another collection of verse, Songs of a Semite: The Dance to Death and Other Poems.
Following the publication of Songs of a Semite, Lazarus wrote several prose pieces concerned with the historical and political interests of the Jewish people, and travelled to France and England, where she met and befriended literary figures, such as Robert Browning and William Morris.
FYI LTC John Shaw SPC Diana D. LTC Hillary Luton
1SG Steven ImermanSSG Pete FishGySgt Gary CordeiroPO1 H Gene LawrenceSPC Chris Bayner-CwikSgt Jim BelanusSGM Bill FrazerMSG Tom EarleySSgt Marian MitchellSGT Michael HearnPO2 Frederick DunnSP5 Dennis LobergerCPO John BjorgeSGT Randell RoseSSG Jimmy CernichSGT Denny EspinosaMSG Fred Bucci
After returning from Europe, Lazarus was asked for an original poem to be auctioned off as a fundraiser for the building of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Though she initially declined, Lazarus later used the opportunity to express the plight of refugee immigrants, who she cared greatly about. Her resulting sonnet, "The New Colossus", includes the iconic lines "Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," and is inscribed on a plaque on the pedestal of the monument.
In 1884, Lazarus fell ill, most likely from Hodgkin's lymphoma. After her father's death the following year, she travelled again, hoping an encounter with a new country would help her regain some of her strength. She visited Italy for the first time, followed by England and France, but soon returned to the United States when her illness worsened. She died a few months later on November 17, 1887."
FYI LTC John Shaw SPC Diana D. LTC Hillary Luton
1SG Steven ImermanSSG Pete FishGySgt Gary CordeiroPO1 H Gene LawrenceSPC Chris Bayner-CwikSgt Jim BelanusSGM Bill FrazerMSG Tom EarleySSgt Marian MitchellSGT Michael HearnPO2 Frederick DunnSP5 Dennis LobergerCPO John BjorgeSGT Randell RoseSSG Jimmy CernichSGT Denny EspinosaMSG Fred Bucci
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