Poems and Translations.
Lazarus, Emma. Poems and Translations. Written between the ages of fourteen and seventeen. New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1867.
8vo.; faint foxing to a few pages; green cloth; extremities lightly frayed.
First edition of Lazarus’s first book, trade issue, with ten more poems than she had included in the privately printed edition issued the previous year; number of copies unknown. BAL 11484. Includes original poems, as well as translations from the German and from the French.
A presentation copy, inscribed on the first blank: Dr. Thos. Buren with kind regard of Emma Lazarus. Dec. 24, 1866. Lazarus was 37 when she died and inscriptions by her are rare. Indeed, for generations autograph collectors have deemed Lazarus’s signature to be one of the scarcest of any American figure.
Jewish-American poet and essayist Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) is best remembered for her sonnet to the oppressed, “The New Colossus,” inscribed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...” In her seminal text The Jewish Woman, Nahida Remy devotes a substantial section in her chapter “Jewish Authoresses” to Lazarus’s contributions:
...Emma Lazarus, who passed away in the bloom of her life, combined a heart full of tender sympathy with an energetic mind. She was born in New York the 22nd of July, 1849. Her earliest poems even give proof of unmistakable talent of a remarkable maturity, of great powers of the imagination, and of a perfect mastery of language. Her second volume of poems, published in 1871, was received in England with a warmth that fell nothing short of enthusiasm. Important journals, as Westminster Review, Atheneum, Illustrated London News, etc., prophesied a glorious future for the poetess. Her success encouraged her muse to soar still higher....After this the poetess turned to more contemplative subjects, and the desire awoke in her mind to read the sacred Scriptures, especially the Psalms, in the original. She learned the Hebrew language with eager zeal, and within four months was able to read the original text. What could have been expected of such a gifted and energetic mind if a greater number of years would have been granted to her . . . (Cincinnati: 1897, p. 222)
Lazarus was a true 19th-century intellectual whose talent earned her the friendships of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry W. Longfellow, and Robert Browning among others. A child prodigy, Lazarus was educated entirely by private tutors, with whom she studied both American literature and the works of medieval Hebrew poets. Although she received enormous encouragement from her parents to pursue writing, Lazarus was aware at an early age of the difficulties facing women who strived for acceptance in a male-dominated industry. Her consciousness inspired the early sonnet “Echoes:”
Late-born and woman-souled I dare not hope…
The might of manly, modern passion shall alight
Upon my Muse’s lips, not may I cope
(Who veiled and screened by womanhood must grope).
The publication of Poems and Translations, all poems written between the ages of 14 and 17, caused Emerson to hail her as one of America’s brightest new voices. Her second volume, Admetus And Other Poems (1871) is dedicated to him.
George Eliot’s novel Daniel Deronda (1876), containing a strident plea for a Jewish national revival, reinforced Lazarus’s interest in Jewish problems. A short time later, after learning of the horrors of the Russian Pogroms and the difficulties of recently arrived Jewish immigrants, Lazarus turned her writing focus to the history and emotional stories of her own Jewish people. Her frequent contributions to The Century Magazine, prominent newspapers of the day, and translations of Jewish works further established this passion.
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