New York City–based poet Emma Lazarus (1849–87) is best known for "The New Colossus," which is inscribed upon the base of the Statue of Liberty. The highly respected writer and intellectual corresponded with Ralph Waldo Emerson and was an advocate for indigent Jewish refugees and a forerunner of the Zionist movement. This two-volume edition of The Poems of Emma Lazarus marks the work's first major reappearance since its last printing in 1900.
Volume II features verse with historic Jewish themes as well as translations of eleventh-century Hebrew poetry and works by Heinrich Heine, Petrarch, and Alfred de Musset. Selections include "The New Ezekiel," "The Feast of Lights," "1492," "By the Waters of Babylon: Little Poems in Prose," "Longing for Jerusalem," and many other poems. Volume I, available separately, features epochs, sonnets, and naturalist poems as well as the celebrated "The New Colossus."