Emma Lazarus

Esther Schor

Winner of the National Jewish Book AwardThe definitive biography of the poet whose sonnet "The New Colossus" appears on the base of the Statue of Liberty, welcoming immigrants to their new home.Emma Lazarus's most famous poem gave a voice to the Statue of Liberty, but her remarkable life has remained a mystery until now. She was a woman so far ahead of her time that we are still scrambling to catch up with her--a feminist, a Zionist, and an internationally famous Jewish American writer before these categories even existed.Drawing upon a cache of personal letters undiscovered until the 1980s, Esther Schor brings this vital woman to life in all her complexity. Born into a wealthy Sephardic family in 1849, Lazarus published her first volume of verse at seventeen and gained entrée into New York's elite literary circles. Although she once referred to her family as "outlaw" Jews, she felt a deep attachment to Jewish history and peoplehood. Her compassion for the downtrodden Jews of Eastern Europe--refugees whose lives had little in common with her own--helped redefine the meaning of America itself. In this groundbreaking biography, Schor argues persuasively for Lazarus's place in history as a poet, an activist, and a prophet of the world we all inhabit today-a world that she helped to invent.Jewish Encounters Series

Prologue: Emma Lazarus and the Three Anne Franks I · 1849–1876Generations The Shadow of Victory Footsteps in Newport Your Professor, My Poet Admetus Oldport A Place in Parnassus Thoreau’s CompassI I · 1876–1881In the Studio The Woman as She Really WasConundrums Awakening An Ancient, Well-Remembered Pain The Critic’s Only Duty The Devil Discovered Fresh Vitality in Every Direction Progress and Poverty I I I · 1882–1883Russian Jewish Horrors Shylocks and Spinozas The List of Singers A Single Thought & a Single Work An Army of Jewish Paupers The Semite and the Hebrews The Poet of the Podolian Ghetto Seeds Sown IV · 1883–1887The Other Half (as It Were) of Our Little World-Ball Mother of Exiles Revolution as the Only Hope The Inward Dissonance The Vacant Chair Passing Phantoms December Roses The Mattress-Grave Sibyl Judaica But If She Herself Were Here Today . . . Appendix: Texts of the Poems Chronology Notes Sources Acknowledgments Index