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Emma Lazarus (Jewish Encounters)by Esther Schor
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Part of the Jewish Encounter series
Emma Lazarus’s most famous poem gave a voice to the Statue of Liberty, but her remarkable life has remained a mystery until now. She was a woman so far ahead of her time that we are still scrambling to catch up with her–a feminist, a Zionist, and an internationally famous Jewish American writer before thse categories even existed. Drawing upon a cache of personal letters undiscovered until the 1980, Esther Schor brings this vital woman to life in all her complexity. Born into a wealthy Sephardic family in 1849, Lazarus published her first volume of verse at seventeen and gained entrée into New York’s elite literary circles. Although she once referred to her family as “outlaw” Jews, she felt a deep attachment to Jewish history and peoplehood. Her compassion for the downtrodden Jews of Eastern Europe–refugees whose lives had little in common with her own–helped redefine the meaning of America itself. In this groundbreaking biography, Schor argues persuasively for Lazarus’s place in history as a poet, an activist, and a prophet of the world we all inhabit today–a world that she helped to invent. Review:"Emma Lazarus's reputation rests on one poem, 'The New Colossus,' affixed to the base of the Statue of Liberty. Lazarus (1849 — 1887), however, was a much heralded artist in her day, and, as this new entry in the Jewish Encounters series shows, Lazarus was a formidable woman of passion and integrity. Poet Schor (a professor of English at Princeton) reveals Lazarus as a prodigy who briefly became the protg of Ralph Waldo Emerson and later corresponded with Henry James and Robert Browning; a champion of Russian Jewish refugees, despite being a member of the highly assimilated Sephardic aristocracy ; and a Zionist before Zionism existed. In Schor's handling, Lazarus comes across more as a strong-willed, philanthropic woman who could write than as an artist driven to activism. Schor's text is marred by a couple of anachronisms, such as a reference to Google, and her prose can turn purple (she describes the morning of Lazarus's death as 'sunless, strung with cloudy pearls'). For all that, while readers may not embrace Lazarus's poetry — it bears all the ponderous, orotund tendencies of its time — they will come to agree with Schor's assessment that Lazarus was a woman we might have liked to know. (Sept. 5)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Synopsis:Emma Lazaruss most famous poem gave a voice to the Statue of Liberty, but her remarkable life has remained a mystery until now. She was a woman so far ahead of her time that we are still scrambling to catch up with her-a feminist, a Zionist, and an internationally famous Jewish American writer before thse categories even existed.
Drawing upon a cache of personal letters undiscovered until the 1980, Esther Schor brings this vital woman to life in all her complexity. Born into a wealthy Sephardic family in 1849, Lazarus published her first volume of verse at seventeen and gained entrée into New Yorks elite literary circles. Although she once referred to her family as “outlaw” Jews, she felt a deep attachment to Jewish history and peoplehood. Her compassion for the downtrodden Jews of Eastern Europe-refugees whose lives had little in common with her own-helped redefine the meaning of America itself. In this groundbreaking biography, Schor argues persuasively for Lazaruss place in history as a poet, an activist, and a prophet of the world we all inhabit today-a world that she helped to invent. About the AuthorEsther Schor, a poet and professor of English at Princeton University, is the author of The Hills of Holland: Poems and Bearing the Dead: The British Culture of Mourning from the Enlightenment to Victoria. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Times Book Review, and the Forward. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
Table of ContentsPrologue: Emma Lazarus and the Three Anne Franks
I · 1849-1876 Generations The Shadow of Victory Footsteps in Newport Your Professor, My Poet Admetus Oldport A Place in Parnassus Thoreaus Compass I I · 1876-1881 In the Studio The Woman as She Really Was Conundrums Awakening An Ancient, Well-Remembered Pain The Critics Only Duty The Devil Discovered Fresh Vitality in Every Direction Progress and Poverty I I I · 1882-1883 Russian Jewish Horrors Shylocks and Spinozas The List of Singers A Single Thought & a Single Work An Army of Jewish Paupers The Semite and the Hebrews The Poet of the Podolian Ghetto Seeds Sown IV · 1883-1887 The Other Half (as It Were) of Our Little World-Ball Mother of Exiles Revolution as the Only Hope The Inward Dissonance The Vacant Chair Passing Phantoms December Roses The Mattress-Grave Sibyl Judaica But If She Herself Were Here Today . . . Appendix: Texts of the Poems Chronology Notes Sources Acknowledgments Index What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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