Katie Zimmerman Byrd 4 Emma Lazarus My name is Emma Lazarus.

My time has come and gone, but the words Ive left behind still linger on in my books, poems, plays, and most famously on the Statue of Liberty. I was born on July 22, 1849 in New York as the fourth of seven children to my father Moses Lazarus and my mother Esther Nathan. I began writing romances at the early age of eleven. My father was very supportive and before I knew it I had a book my father privately published entitled Poems and Translations: Written Between the Ages of Fourteen and Sixteen when I was at the age of seventeen. I had a lot of spare time to work on my writing because I was educated at home by private tutors provided by my parents. My life consisted of writing for magazines by the time I was twenty-five. I was also appearing regularly Lippincotts Magazine and Scribners Monthly at that point in my life. By the time I reached twenty-seven I had written a five-act drama The Spagnoletto, which I based off 1655 Italy I am a true sucker for classic romance stories. Five years later I finished and published my translation of Heinrich Heines Poems and Ballads, which were considered the best translations at that moment in time, though some would still say that my best focal point in my work would be in my poetry. In the early 1880s an outbreak of anti-Semitism broke out in Russia and Germany, which gained a lot of attention from the press. One reporter was ignorant enough to defend the outbreaks in an article for Century Magazine! That author got a very heated reply from me. From that moment I began to stand up for my people; The Jewish people.

In 1883 I sailed to promote Zionists, and made many great friends in my time there. I returned to the States 1865, two years later. The Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor was dedicated in my honor where my sonnet, The New Colossus, was engraved. There at the bottom of that statue all of my work to promote the Jewish religion is saved forever in my words, welcoming immigrants from all over into the welcoming arms of the United States of America. Here at our-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 New Colossus by Emma Lazarus Engraved on the Statue of Liberty in the New York Harbor)

Bibliography

Kessner, Carole. "Emma Lazarus." Encyclopaedia Judaica. Ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 19 Sep. 2011. "Emma Lazarus." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Gale Student Resources In Context. Web. 19 Sep. 2011.