Poet. Born one of seven children to Esther Nathan and Moses Lazarus, a wealthy merchant, in New York City. She received a classical education at home, and as a teen began translating the poems of French and German writers. She published a volume of poetry, 'Admetus and Other Poems' in 1871; a novel, 'Alide: An Episode in Goethe's Life' in 1874; and a drama, 'The Spagnoletto' in 1876. Throughout the 1870's, her poetry was printed in several periodicals including 'Lipincott's Magazine.' She then began to translate medieval Hebrew poetry and became an advocate for a Jewish homeland. By the 1880s, the influx of Jewish immigrants from European and Russian ghettos fleeing pogroms inspired her 'Songs of a Semite: The Dance to Death and Other Poems' in 1882. In 1883, she wrote 'The New Colossus' for an auction which served as a fund raiser for the Pedestal Fund for the as yet incomplete Statue of Liberty. The poem included the iconic lines, "Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." In 1884, her health declined, and the following year, hoping travel would be beneficial, she visited Italy for the first time, followed by a second trip to England and France. Her illness, now believed to have been a form of cancer, worsened. She returned to the United States in 1887, and succumbed to the illness some months later at the age of 38. Her final book was published that same year, 'By the Waters of Babylon.' In 1903, her poem, 'The New Colossus,' was engraved on a plaque and affixed to the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. In 2009, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Her personal papers are archived by the American Jewish Historical Society and her letters are archived at Columbia University. She was a cousin to Benjamin Nathan Cordoza, United States Supreme Court Associate Justice. A biography, 'Emma Lazarus' by Esther Schor was published in 2006.