Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Ruth Fainlight
Standard Name: Fainlight, Ruth
Birth Name: Ruth Esther Fainlight
Married Name: Ruth Sillitoe
RF
is a poet active since the mid twentieth century who says she is always either writing a poem or waiting with a variety of emotions for the next poem to announce itself. Other forms of writing—stories, translation, libretti—can divert me for a while, but if too much time passes without work on a poem, I feel uneasy.
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
She is a remarkably international writer, having published in France and Mexico, as well as having her work translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian.
While she was teaching at Essex, EF
met a number of poets, including Ed Dorn
, who fed her interest in American poetry. She was also involved during these years with a group including Tom Pickard
Diski, Jenny. “Doris and Me”. London Review of Books, No. 1, pp. 21 - 3.
21
Friends, Associates
Sylvia Plath
SP
felt like an outsider in England. One highly promising friendship she made there was that with Ruth Fainlight
, another aspiring young, female, married poet of US origin. But this was largely a friendship...
Literary responses
Seamus Heaney
The TLS review, despite SH
's earlier appearance in the pages of that journal, appeared to think this was his first book, grouping it with debut works by Karen Gershon
and Ruth Fainlight
. The...
Literary responses
Judith Kazantzis
Ruth Fainlight
praised the poet's ability to imagine herself into many roles, and Marina Warner
wrote that Kazantzis had made of the well-known ordeals of Odysseus, both physical and mental or emotional, a vivid meditation...
Literary responses
Judith Kazantzis
Ruth Fainlight
, in picking this book as her Christmas choice in The Independent, called it a three generation story woven against a rich and complex political background.
Judith Kazantzis.
Occupation
Elaine Feinstein
EF
's introduction to Russian literature, which set her seriously reading and then translating Russian authors, significantly influenced her thinking.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
14
Since 1972 she has earned her living as a writer. She has lectured for...
She selected slightly more carols by women than by men, and recalled that Christina Rossetti
's In the Bleak Midwinter was the result of a commission from Scribner's Monthly in 1872. Her own contribution concerns...
Textual Features
Carol Ann Duffy
The sixty poets were each commissioned for a poem marking a particular year. They included Gillian Clarke
(1955: Running Away to the Sea), Ruth Fainlight
(1963: World Events), Liz Lochhead
(1966: Photograph, Art...
Textual Production
Monica Furlong
This journal's first issue (with Ruth Fainlight
as the only female contributor) had appeared in 1965. The other female contributors to this volume were Birk, Karen Gershon
, and Pamela Melnikoff
.
Alan Sillitoe
, husband of Ruth Fainlight
, had his first success with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, a novel resulting from Robert Graves
's advice to write something honest about his native Nottingham.
By September 1959
Alan Sillitoe
, husband of the poet Ruth Fainlight
, published the second of his best-known works, a short-story volume entitled The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.
