Emma Lazarus is best known for her immortal sonnet to the Statue of Liberty, "The New Colossus." She has also been mythologized as a brilliant but reclusive spinster. Now author Bette Roth Young has discovered over 60 original letters in the attic of the home of Lazarus' close friends Helena deKay and Richard Watson Gilder.

These letters shed new light on this legendary figure; they describe, in Emma's own words and the words of her friends, the social life and the personality of a vital young woman who traveled widely here and abroad, socializing wherever she went, and meeting life with passion and an unfailing sense of humor.

Emma Lazarus was, in fact, a lively presence in a New York City coming of age. Her friends ranged from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne's daughter Rose Lathrop to such luminaries across the sea as Ivan Turgenev, Robert Browning, William Morris, and Henry James. Emma Lazarus in Her World: Life and Letters brings together the best and the brightest men and women, artist and thinkers, at century's end.