The Poems of Emma Lazarus, Volume I

by Emma Lazarus

Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) was an American poet. She is best known for writing The New Colossus, a sonnet written in 1883, that is now engraved on a bronze plaque on a wall in the base of the Statue of Liberty. She studied American and European literature, as well as German, French, and Italian. Her writings attracted the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who corresponded with her up until his death. She wrote her own original poems and edited many adaptations of German and Italian poems, notably those of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Heinrich Heine. She also wrote a novel and two plays. Lazarus' latent Judaism was awakened after reading the George Eliot novel, Daniel Deronda, and this was further strengthened by the Russian pogroms 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 is known as an important forerunner of the Zionist movement. In fact, she argued for the creation of a Jewish homeland thirteen years before Herzl began to use the term Zionism.

Genres: Poetry, Classics

354 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 12, 2007

About the author

Emma Lazarus was an American Jewish poet born in New York City.

She is best known for "The New Colossus", a sonnet written in 1883; its lines appear on a bronze plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty placed in 1903. The sonnet was written for and donated to an auction, conducted by the "Art Loan Fund Exhibition in Aid of the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund for the Statue of Liberty" to raise funds to build the pedestal.

She died of Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Reviews

[Mark Hartman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good poetry from a mostly forgotten poet. Emma’s most famous poem is The New Colossus. The New Colossus was written to help raise funds for the pedestal the Statue Of Liberty sits on. If it wasn’t that poem and the successful effort to get it placed on a plaque at the base of The Statue Of Liberty, Emma Lazarus may have not have been as well remembered. Emma died young at the age of 38 from cancer.

[Truls Ljungström · Rating 2 out of 5]

Verkligen inte min smak. Omoget intryck, väldigt svulstig, men utan tillräcklig kulturell förankring för att göra det bra.

[Lucy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unreadable due to formatting

I assume there's been some kind of error with the formatting. The titles are HUGE, and often not on the same page as the poem they're the title of?

Meanwhile, the text itself is in *tiny* courrier font. Got annoyed trying to zoom in and then navigate around the page; it's a book of poetry, it should be easy to flip through.

Emma Lazarus is a great poet. Part of her sonnet "Colassus" is on the statue of Liberty. Unfortunately, now I have to find a decent edition of this book if I actually want to read any of her lesser-known poems. I suppose I should have checked out the free sample before I picked this one.