T. Johnson and W. Kurtz · Public domain

Wrote "The New Colossus," the 1883 sonnet inscribed on the Statue of Liberty's pedestal, its closing lines — "Give me your tired, your poor" — later set to music by Irving Berlin. She wrote the poem out of direct engagement with the cause: she worked to aid Jewish refugees arriving in New York after fleeing pogroms in eastern Europe, and cast the statue as a beacon for exactly those people. She also published several volumes of original poetry and translations of Heinrich Heine.