Emma Lazarus was born on July 22nd, 1849, in New York City, the fourth of seven children of Moses Lazarus and Esther Nathan, Sephardic Jews whose families, originally from Portugal, had settled in New York during the colonial period. From an early age, she studied American and British literature, as well as the German, French, and Italian languages. Her early writings attracted the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emma grew to become not only an...