Emma Lazarus (1849 - 1887)

Born 22 Jul 1849 in New York City, New York County, New York, United States

Ancestors

Died 19 Nov 1887 at age 38 in New York City, New York County, New York, United States

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Biography

Emma Lazarus is Notable.

Emma Lazarus was an American author of poetry, prose, and translations, as well as an activist for Jewish causes. She is best known for penning “The New Colossus,” the sonnet that appears on a bronze plaque inside the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal and beseeches bystanders to “Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free …”

Emma Lazarus was born in New York City, July 22, 1849^[1], into a large Sephardic Jewish family. She was the fourth of seven children of Moses Lazarus, a wealthy Jewish merchant and sugar refiner, and Esther Nathan. One of her great-grandfathers on the Lazarus side was from Germany; the rest of her Lazarus and Nathan ancestors were originally from Portugal and resident in New York long before the American Revolution, being among the original twenty-three Portuguese Jews who arrived in New Amsterdam fleeing the Inquisition from their settlement of Recife, Brazil.

She died on November 19, 1887 in New York City, New York County, New York, United States.

The New Colossus

By Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “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!”

Her books

Lazarus, Emma (1888). The Poems of Emma Lazarus. Houghton, Mifflin and Company. "Emma Lazarus."

The Poems of Emma Lazarus, Volume I: Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic (Dover Thrift Editions Book 1) Oct 27, 2014.

The Poems of Emma Lazarus, Volume 2 Jewish poems: Translations May 12, 2012.

ADMETUS AND OTHER POEMS, May 6, 2018, by EMMA LAZARUS.

Sources

1. ↑ Stern, Malcolm H. First American Jewish families : 600 genealogies, 1654-1988, Third Edition Updated amd Revised. Baltimore, Maryland: Ottenheimer Publishers, Inc., 1978,1960,1991. p 150.

• Wikipedia:Emma_Lazarus
• Wikidata: Item Q240959, :Wikipedia
• Find A Grave: Memorial #10018
• “Lazarus, Emma | Women of the Hall.” Accessed April 2024. https://www.womenofthehall.org/inductee/emma-lazarus/ .