Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Elaine Feinstein
Standard Name: Feinstein, Elaine
Birth Name: Elaine Cooklin
Married Name: Elaine Feinstein
By early 2001 EF
had published fifteen novels and thirteen poetry collections, besides translation, biography, and drama, most of it for radio or television. She has given different answers to the question whether her poetry or fiction is primary. In 1985 she said that if pushed she would call herself first and foremost a poet,
Couzyn, Jeni, editor. The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Women Poets. Bloodaxe Books.
116
but some years later she said that whichever she was working on recently tends to be her favourite genre.
Pacernick, Gary. Meaning and Memory: Interviews with Fourteen Jewish Poets. Ohio State University Press.
190
In most of her writing she is an interpreter, bringing work from one language or one medium into another, opening (through poems or novels) historical periods and actual events and people to the enquiring gaze of the creative imagination.
AA
, at Tsarskoe Selo, composed a poem which became one of her best-known: The Grey-Eyed King, on the accidental death out hunting of a young king, which Elaine Feinstein
likens to one...
Literary responses
Nina Bawden
Auberon Waugh
's review of the book was headed: If only nasty Laura had kept her clothes on . . . .
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
207
Elaine Feinstein
, reviewing it along with Salman Rushdie
's Midnight's Children...
Textual Production
Patricia Beer
For the London Review of Books, PB
dealt with books by women both in her first review (on 8 November 1979, one month before the magazine first carried one of her poems), where she...
Because of the extent to which ED
's concentrated and elusive verse, as well as her dissent from religious and social orthodoxies, seem to presage modernism, she has been considered the sole serious writer among...
Anthologization
Carol Ann Duffy
In the same year CAD
's Poet to Prose-Writer, a version from Pushkin
, stood first of the six pieces by her among the translations, versions of and responses by British, Irish, and American...
RF
has drawn appreciative comment from fellow poets and writers like Helen Dunmore
, A. S. Byatt
, and Elaine Feinstein
(who has written that in a time when every poet is wooed by the...
Friends, Associates
Ruth Fainlight
Hughes and Plath were about to leave for Devon, but this did not halt the intimacy developing between the two women. Plath stayed with Fainlight and Sillitoe when she visited London, and the London couple...
Literary responses
Jane Gardam
Opinions used to advertise this volume included one from Elaine Feinstein
, who called JGa spare and elegant master of her art.
Anne Duchêne
, however, provided an unusually unenthusiastic...
Reception
Karen Gershon
Peter Lawson
has considered KB's work in Anglo-Jewish Poetry from Isaac Rosenberg
to Elaine Feinstein, 2006.
Textual Production
Susan Hill
SH
's volume of autobiographical sketches, The Magic Apple Tree: A Country Year, was published with engravings by John Lawrence
. In May the BBC
ran a 20-minute film about it on their Omnibus...
Reception
Storm Jameson
SJ
was offered the award of CBE in 1979, but declined.
“The Refuseniks and the Offers They Turned Down”. Sunday Times, p. 5.
5
Her books sold well in their time and were translated into Czech, Danish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Spanish, and Swedish. Virago
re-issued...
Literary responses
Pamela Hansford Johnson
Reviewers, who knew their notices of this book were valedictory, concentrated on PHJ
's remarkable ability to create complex and convincing characters.
Elaine Feinstein
, however, though she wrote that she found Johnson here at...
Timeline
31 August 1941: Marina Tsvetaeva, poet and playwright, hanged...
Writing climate item
31 August 1941
Marina Tsvetaeva
, poet and playwright, hanged herself in the small town of Elabuga, USSR, either during or just after she was visited by agents of the NKVD
or People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs...
About October 1973: The Women's Theatre Group (still in being...
By mid-October 1983: Ursula Owen, editor of Virago Press, published...
Women writers item
By mid-October 1983
Ursula Owen
, editor of Virago Press
, published with them an anthology of essays: Fathers: Reflections by Daughters.
September-November 2005: An exhibition at the National Theatre in...
Writing climate item
September-November 2005
An exhibition at the National Theatre
in London, Flogging the Jewels, celebrated thirty years of the company now called Sphinx
(formerly the Women's Theatre Group).
29 November 2010: Russian poet and translator Bella Akhmadulina...
Writing climate item
29 November 2010
Russian poet and translator Bella Akhmadulina
died at the age of seventy-three.
“Bella Akhmadulina”. Edmonton Journal, p. E7.
Texts
Feinstein, Elaine. A Captive Lion. Hutchinson, 1987.
Feinstein, Elaine. Anna of all the Russias: The Life of Anna Akhmatova. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005.
Feinstein, Elaine. Badlands. Hutchinson, 1986.
Feinstein, Elaine. Cities. Carcanet, 2010.
Feinstein, Elaine. City Music. Hutchinson, 1990.
Feinstein, Elaine. Collected Poems and Translations. Carcanet, 2002.
Feinstein, Elaine. Dark Inheritance. Women’s Press, 2000.
Feinstein, Elaine. Daylight. Carcanet, 1997.
Feinstein, Elaine. Dreamers. Macmillan, 1994.
Feinstein, Elaine. Gold. Carcanet, 2000.
Feinstein, Elaine. In a Green Eye. Goliard, 1966.
Feinstein, Elaine, and Storm Jameson. “Introduction”. None Turn Back, Virago, 1984, p. i - vii.
Feinstein, Elaine. It Goes with the Territory. Alma, 2013.
Feinstein, Elaine. Lady Chatterley’s Confession. Macmillan, 1995.