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 I features epochs, sonnets, and naturalist poems. The epochs consist of reflections on youth, regret, grief, longing, and other emotions. Other poems include "On the Proposal to Erect a Monument in England to Lord Byron," "Agamemnon's Tomb," "August Moon," "A Masque of Venice," and the renowned "The New Colossus." The collection concludes with "The Spagnoletto: A Play in Five Acts." Volume II, available separately, 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.