SOURCE: Wagenknecht, Edward. “Emma Lazarus.” In Daughters of the Covenant: Portraits of Six Jewish Women, pp. 25-54. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1983.

In the following essay, Wagenknecht comments on Lazarus's life, poetic themes, literary influences, and religious attitudes.

I

Emma Lazarus was a pioneer Zionist and one of the very first writers to strike an authentically Jewish note in American literature, but most readers today merely think of her as the only poet who has ever had the honor of having her verses engraved upon the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty:

                                                  “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” 

In her time she was known for much more. Bryant thought the verses in her first book, Poems and Translations Written...