Emma Lazarus

Born in New York City in 1849, Emma Lazarus was raised in a prosperous Sephardic Jewish family and educated by private tutors. She showed an early gift for languages and literature, publishing poetry while still young and building a reputation as a writer, translator, and essayist.

She is most widely remembered for writing "The New Colossus" in 1883, the poem later associated with the Statue of Liberty and its vision of refuge and hope. Beyond that famous sonnet, she wrote about Jewish life, identity, and social responsibility at a time when large numbers of Jewish refugees were arriving in the United States.

Lazarus died in 1887 at just 38, but her work has lasted far beyond her lifetime. Today she is remembered not only as a poet of memorable lines, but as a writer whose compassion and public spirit helped define what America could mean to newcomers.