Elaine Feinstein

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Elaine Feinstein (2011)

Elaine Feinstein (born October 24, 1930 in Bootle ; died September 23, 2019 in London ) was a British writer .

Life

Elaine Cooklin was the daughter of a cabinet maker, her four Jewish grandparents had all emigrated from Odessa to Great Britain, and two of her mother's brothers had studied in Cambridge. She grew up in Leicester , where she attended public school. The exposure of the Nazi crimes towards the end of World War II confronted her with the Jewish origins of her family, an issue that she later took up.

Cooklin studied at Newnham College of the University of Cambridge . In 1956 she married the chemist and immunologist Arnold Feinstein (1926–2002), a cousin of the actor Leonard Fenton . They had three sons. Arnold struggled through the beginnings of a scientific career, and Elaine took care of the housekeeping and weathered his marital crises and infidelity in a "pre-feminist woman" (Bryan Cheyette, TLS, 2014). He probably didn't take her paperwork too seriously. She worked as a lecturer for Cambridge University Press (1960–62) and as an English teacher at Bishop's Stortford Training College (1963–66). Her first volume of poetry, In a Green Eye , was published in 1966. The writer Donald Davie brought her to the University of Essex as an assistant lecturer in 1967 . She worked there until 1970 and in 1971 published a volume of translated poems by Marina Tsvetaeva .

Feinstein wrote poetry, novels, short stories, dramas, biographies and translations. Her first novel The Circle was published in 1970. In that year the regulations for the Man Booker Prize were changed so that the books of the year were not included in the selection. When the award was made up for in 2010 with the Lost Man Booker Prize , her first novel came on the longlist. Feinstein has written a number of radio plays and television plays that were produced by the BBC or ITV. Among her biographies are one of the singer Bessie Smith , one of the writer DH Lawrence and one of the Russian writer Anna Akhmatova, translated several times . She was friends with Ted Hughes , and his sister and mentor Olwyn Hughes was also her agent . Feinstein wrote a benevolent biography of Hughes. She was a translator from Russian. One biography says that while translating, she found her own literary voice. During the Cold War and the détente, she visited Eastern European countries several times and supported the dissidents there.

Feinstein received the Cholmondeley Award for Literature in 1990 and an honorary doctorate from the University of Leicester , and she has been repeatedly invited to the jury of renowned literary prizes. Feinstein is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was elected to its board in 2007.

Feinstein last lived in London.

Works (selection)

  • Bessie Smith: Lives of Modern Women Series. Penguin / Viking, London 1985.
  • A Captive Lion: The Life of Marina Tsvetayeva. Hutchinson, London 1987.
    • Marina Tsvetaeva. A biography. Translation by Hans J. Schütz. Frankfurter Verlags-Anstalt, Frankfurt am Main 1990, ISBN 3-627-10018-2 .
  • Lawrence's Women. HarperCollins, London 1993.
  • Pushkin. Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London 1998.
  • Ted Hughes: The Life of a Poet. Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2001.
  • Anna of all the Russias: A Life of Anna Akhmatova. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005.
  • It Goes with the Territory: Memoirs of a Poet. Autobiography. Alma, London 2013.

Poetry

  • The Selected Poems of Marina Tsvetayeva. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1961.
  • In a green eye. Goliard Press, London 1966.
  • The Magic Apple Tree. Hutchinson, London 1971.
  • At the edge. Scepter Press, London 1972.
  • The Celebrants and Other Poems. Hutchinson, London 1973.
  • Three Russian Poets: Margarita Aliger , Yunna Morits , Bella Achmadulina . Elaine Feinstein in Romanian. Carcanet Press, Manchester 1976.
  • Some Unease and Angels. Hutchinson, London 1977.
  • The Feast of Eurydice. Faber & Faber, London 1980.
  • Badlands. Hutchinson, London 1987.
  • City Music. Hutchinson, London 1990.
  • Selected Poems. Carcanet Press, Manchester 1994.
  • Daylight. Carcanet Press, Manchester 1997.
  • (Ed.): After Pushkin. Folio Society & Carcanet Press, London 1999.
  • Gold. Carcanet Press, Manchester 2000.
  • Collected Poems and Translations. Carcanet Press, Manchester 2002.
  • Talking to the Dead. Carcanet Press, Manchester 2007.
  • Bride of Ice: New Selected Poems of Marina Tsvetayeva. Carcanet Press, Manchester 2009.
  • Cities. Carcanet Press, Manchester 2010.

Novels

  • The Circle. Hutchinson, London 1973.
  • The Amberstone Exit. Hutchinson, London 1974.
  • The Glass Alembic , as The Crystal Garden. Hutchinson, London 1978.
  • Children of the Rose. Hutchinson, London 1976.
  • The Ecstasy of Dr Miriam Garner. Hutchinson, London 1976.
  • The Shadow Master. Hutchinson, London 1978.
  • The Survivors. Hutchinson; London, New York 1991.
  • The Border. Hutchinson, London 1985.
  • Mother's girl. Hutchinson, London 1990
  • All you need. Hutchinson, London 1991.
  • Loving Brecht. Hutchinson, London 1993.
  • Dreamers. Macmillan, London 1994.
  • Lady Chatterley's Confession. Macmillan, London 1995.
  • Dark inheritance. Women's Press, London 2001.
  • The Russian Jerusalem. Carcanet Press, Manchester 2008.

Short stories

  • Matters of chance. Covent Garden Press, London.
  • The Silent Areas. Hutchinson, London.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Elaine Feinstein: Father . Poem, in: Simon Armitage ; Robert Crawford (Ed.): The Penguin book of poetry from Britain and Ireland since 1945 . London: Viking, 1998 ISBN 0-670-86829-9 , pp. 163f.
  2. ^ Arnold Feinstein. Leading immunologist of insatiable curiosity , Obituary in The Guardian , December 10, 2002
  3. ↑ Jenni Calder : The Contradictions of Literary Life , article, in The Yewish Quarterly , March 2015
  4. ^ Elaine Feinstein , biography at British Council
personal data
SURNAME Feinstein, Elaine
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Elaine Cooklin (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 24, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Bootle
DATE OF DEATH 23 September 2019
Place of death London