Emma Lazarus

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award

Emma Lazarus's most famous poem gave a voice to the Statue of Liberty, but her remarkable story has remained a mystery until now. Drawing upon a cache of personal letters undiscovered until the 1980s, Esther Schor brings this vital woman to life in all her complexity-as a feminist, a Zionist, and a trailblazing Jewish-American writer. Schor argues persuasively for Lazarus's place in history as an activist and a prophet of the world we all inhabit today. As a stunning rebuke to fear, xenophobia, and isolationism, Lazarus's life and work are more relevant now than ever before.

Prologue: Emma Lazarus and the Three Anne Franks ix
 
I · 1849–1876
Generations 3
The Shadow of Victory 11
Footsteps in Newport 15
Your Professor, My Poet 20
Admetus 34
Oldport 36
A Place in Parnassus 43
Thoreau’s Compass 51
 
I I · 1876–1881
In the Studio 57
The Woman as She Really Was 65
Conundrums 72
Awakening 79
An Ancient, Well-Remembered Pain 86
The Critic’s Only Duty 90
The Devil Discovered 95
Fresh Vitality in Every Direction 106
Progress and Poverty 114
 
I I I · 1882–1883
Russian Jewish Horrors 119
Shylocks and Spinozas 128
The List of Singers 133
A Single Thought & a Single Work 136
An Army of Jewish Paupers 142
The Semite and the Hebrews 150
The Poet of the Podolian Ghetto 166
Seeds Sown 169
 
I V · 1883–1887
The Other Half (as It Were) of Our Little World-Ball 175
Mother of Exiles 185
Revolution as the Only Hope 198
The Inward Dissonance 209
The Vacant Chair 213
Passing Phantoms 216
December Roses 223
The Mattress-Grave 234
Sibyl Judaica 239
But If She Herself Were Here Today... 245
 
Appendix: Texts of the Poems 261
Chronology 299
Notes 309
Sources 323
Acknowledgments 329
Index 333