Emma Lazarus

"Emma Lazarus was born on July 22, 1849. Born to an affluent New York family, she received a liberal education in languages and literature, wrote poetry from an early age, essays, articles and even a play. If she were a man, we would call her an all around public intellectual. Because she was a woman writing in the nineteenth century, we say she belonged to that tradition of educated refined women whose family (mainly her father) realized her potential. As an upper-class women of her time, she joined like-minded young women who were fortunate enough to have their family's support to write and publish. By the time Lazarus came of age, women had been writing publicly and successfully, joining and establishing literary salons, and enjoying success as professional writers. Some wrote for their wages or in order to keep their family fed (like Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women (1868). Others, freed from financial burden actively worked to succeed as poets. She joins, therefore, the list of American women who wrote, spoke up, and asserted their talent in the public sphere. She led, therefore, an assimilated life, a life led by many Americans of her day. In this way, she seems unremarkable or at the very least ordinary, certainly nothing much to proudly display in Jewish history. However, she has also been repeatedly acknowledged as the one Jewish person, man or woman, to reach such a level of literary acknowledgment by the mainstream, dominant cultural elite during that time in American history. That, and the level of dedication American culture demonstrated to her poem, 'The New Colossus' (1883) should very much encourage interest in her life and work"-- Provided by publisher.