Elaine Feinstein

Elaine Feinstein FRSL (born Elaine Cooklin; 24 October 1930 – 23 September 2019) was an English poet, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, biographer and translator. She joined the Council of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007.

Early life Born in Bootle, Lancashire, England, Feinstein grew up in Leicester.

Feinstein was sent to Wyggeston Grammar School for Girls by her mother, "a school as good as Leicester could provide". She wrote poems from the age of eight, which were published in the school magazine. At the end of the war Feinstein's sense of childhood security was shattered by the revelations of the Nazi extermination camps. She noted, "In that year I became Jewish for the first time."

Feinstein excelled at school work from then on. After Newnham College, Cambridge, she read for the bar, worked at Hockerill Training College, and then as a university lecturer at the University of Essex (1967–1970), appointed by Donald Davie. She commented that she wanted "plain propositions, lines that came singing out of poems with a perfection of phrasing like lines of music." Her biography of Anna Akhmatova, Anna of all the Russias, appeared in 2005 and was translated into twelve European languages, including Russian.

Her first novel, The Circle (1970), written under Tsvetayeva's influence, Several novels concern her Jewish roots: The Survivors (1982), spans the generations before and after the Holocaust, while The Border (1984) tells of an old woman in Sydney and her "painful, mysterious... escape from Vienna with her husband in 1939". Olson's reply, on "breath prosody" and the development of his poetics since the publication of his essay "Projective Verse", has since been widely anthologised. Feinstein participated in the 22nd Aldeburgh Poetry Festival in November 2010 and continued to give readings in various countries.

Asked in an interview with Alma Books what three books she would save if her house were on fire, she replied, "I'd take my iPad."

Death Elaine Feinstein died of cancer in London on 23 September 2019, aged 88. She was survived by her three sons and six grandchildren.

Books Poetry In a Green Eye (London: Goliard Press, 1966) The Magic Apple Tree (London: Hutchinson, 1971) At the Edge (Northamptonshire: Sceptre Press, 1972) The Celebrants and Other Poems (Hutchinson, 1973) Some Unease and Angels: Selected Poems (University Center, MI: Green River Press, 1977; Hutchinson, 1981) The Feast of Eurydice (London: Faber & Faber/Next Editions, 1980) Badlands (Hutchinson, 1987) City Music (Hutchinson, 1990) Selected Poems (Carcanet Press, 1994) Daylight (Carcanet Press, 1997) Gold (Carcanet Press, 2000) Collected Poems and Translations (Carcanet Press, 2002) Talking to the Dead (Carcanet Press, 2007) Cities (Carcanet Press, 2010) The Clinic, Memory: New and Selected Poems (Carcanet Press, 2017)

Novels The Circle (London: Hutchinson, 1970) The Amberstone Exit (Hutchinson, 1972). Translated into Hebrew (Keter 1984) The Glass Alembic (Hutchinson, 1973; New York: Dutton, 1974 as The Crystal Garden) Children of the Rose (Hutchinson, 1974). Translated into Hebrew, 1987 The Ecstasy of Dr Miriam Garner (Hutchinson, 1976) The Shadow Master (Hutchinson, 1978; New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979) The Survivors (Hutchinson, 1982) The Border (Hutchinson, 1985) Mother's Girl (Hutchinson, 1988) All You Need (Hutchinson, 1991) Loving Brecht (Hutchinson, 1992) Dreamers (London: Macmillan, 1994) Lady Chatterley's Confession (Macmillan, 1995) Dark Inheritance (London, Women's Press, 2001) The Russian Jerusalem (Carcanet Press, 2008)

Short story collections Matters of Chance (London: Covent Garden Press, 1972) The Silent Areas (Hutchinson, 1980)

Teleplays and radio plays 1975: Breath 1980: Echoes 1981: A Late Spring 1982: Lunch 1984: A Captive Lion 1985: Marina Tsvetayeva: A Life 1985: A Brave Face 1986: A Day Off 1987: If I Ever Get on My Feet Again 1990: The Man in Her Life 1993: Foreign Girls, a trilogy 1994: A Winter Meeting 1996: Lawrence's Women in Love (four-part adaptation) 1996: Adaptation of novel, Lady Chatterley's Confession Book at Bedtime

Biographies Bessie Smith: Lives of Modern Women Series, Penguin/Viking A Captive Lion: The Life of Marina Tsvetayeva, Hutchinson, 1987 Lawrence's Women, HarperCollins, London, 1993; Lawrence and The Women New York, 1993 Pushkin, Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Ecco, U.S, 1998 Ted Hughes: The Life of a Poet, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001 Anna of all the Russias: A Life of Anna Akhmatova, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005; Knopf, 2006 Portraits (Carcanet Press, 2015)

Memoirs

It Goes With The Territory: Memoirs of a Poet, Alma Books, 2013

Translations

Marina Tsvetayeva: Selected Poems (1971; 2nd ed., 1981; 3rd ed., 1986; 4th ed., 1993; 5th ed., 1999; 6th ed. 2009 as Bride of Ice: New Selected Poems) Three Russian Poets: Margarita Aliger, Yunna Morits, Bella Akhmadulina, Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1976

As editor

After Pushkin, Folio Society/Carcanet Press, 1999

In anthologies

Contributor to A New Divan: A Lyrical Dialogue Between East and West, Gingko Library 2019.

Prizes and awards 1970: Arts Council Grant/Award for Translation 1971: Betty Miller Prize 1979: Arts Council Grant/Award for Translation 1981: Arts Council Grant/Award for Translation 1981: Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature 1990: Cholmondeley Award 1990: Shortlisted for 1990 Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize 1992: Society of Authors Travel Award 2004: Arts Council Award