American Literary Studies
Emma Lazarus Correspondence
The Collection
Location: Department of Special Collections, Green Library
Call Number: M1023 - in process
Size: 98 letters
Finding Guides: Available in the Reading Room of the Department
of Special Collections.
Research Access and Use: Materials in the Department of
Special Collections are non-circulating and must be used in the
Special Collections' Reading Room in the Cecil H. Green Library.
The Reading Room is open 10:00am to 5:00pm Monday through Friday.
Photocopies, photographs, and microfilm can be made of some materials
in the collections. For more information about the collections
and access policies, please contact Special Collections by telephone
at (650) 725-1022, by electronic mail at speccollref@stanford.edu or by regular mail at the Department of Special Collections, Stanford
University Libraries, Stanford, California 94305-6004.
Career of Emma Lazarus, 1849 - 1887:
Emma Lazarus was a poet and essayist whose first work, Poems
and Translations (1867) was published when she was just 18 years
old. The book attracted the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom
Lazarus visited in Concord, commencing a life-long correspondence
with him. She dedicated her second book, Admetus and Other Poems
(1871) "To my friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson." During the
next decade she contributed numerous poems to Scribner's Monthly,
and she found other correspondents in the editor, Richard Watson
Gilder and his wife, Helena de Kay Gilder. The persecution of Russian
Jews during 1879-1883 caught her attention and became a lifelong
cause for her. When the refugees began to crowd into Ward's Island
in 1881, she became prominent in organizing efforts for their relief.
In 1882 Century magazine, now editied by Richard Gilder,
published her critical study, "Was the Earl of Beaconsfield
a Representative Jew?" There then appeared an article by a
Russian journalist defending the pogroms. In reply she published
the article, "Russian Christianity versus Modem Judaism."
which soon defined her as the leading American champion of her race.
Her impassioned articles and poems on "The Jewish Problem"
appeared in Century magazine and The American Hebrew.
Her sonnet on the Statue of Liberty was honored by being placed
on its pedestal in 1886. She died from cancer the following year
at the age of 38.
Description of the letters:
The letters range from 1877 to 1887 and are written to Mrs. Richard
Watson Gilder, as well as one l0-page letter to Richard Watson Gilder,
editor of Scribner’s Monthly and Century magazines.
The 55 letters comprise over 400 holograph pages in which she discusses
architecture, music, art and literature and the people of her acquaintance
including William Morris, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edward Burne-Jones,
Anton Rubenstein, Robert Browning, and Henry James among others.
Also included are other Lazarus family letters to Mrs. Gilder
Sarah Lazarus: 24 letters, 1894 to 1909
Annie Lazarus: 2 letters, 1887 and 1898
Josephine Lazarus: 18 letters 1887 to 1905.
Links to other resources:
University
of Toronto: Selected Poetry of Emma Lazarus
Last modified:
July 3, 2006
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