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,
qtd. in
Couzyn, Jeni, editor. The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Women Poets. Bloodaxe Books, 1985.
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, 2001.
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.
Black and white photograph of Elaine Feinstein by Kaido Vainomaa, reading at Shaar International Poetry Festival in Tel_Aviv, 2010. She is seen from the waist up, standing at a microphone, reading from a slim volume that she holds and bends back. She is wearing a shirt with a V-neck and a metal flower necklace. She has wire-framed glasses and short curly hair.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
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...
Fictionalization Amy Levy
Thomas Bailey Aldrich in his poem Broken Music characterizes her verse as wierdly incomplete; / Here a proud mind, self-baffled and self-stung, / Lies coiled in dark defeat.
qtd. in
Wagenknecht, Edward. Daughters of the Covenant: Portraits of Six Jewish Women. University of Massachusetts Press, 1983.
58
Poet Elaine Feinstein responds to her...
Friends, Associates Ruth Padel
RP is a friend of Elaine Feinstein .
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...
Intertextuality and Influence Ruth Padel
The cover features battered old leather suitcases of a kind no longer seen in use. The first two names in enumerated among recipients of RP 's [w]arm thanks for criticism and comment are those of...
Intertextuality and Influence Emily Dickinson
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...
Literary responses Carol Rumens
Baby Baby Baby won first prize in the Peterloo Poetry Competition in 2003.
Rumens, Carol. Poems 1968-2004. Bloodaxe Books, 2004.
prelims
The volume appeared with praise from distinguished quarters. Anne Stevenson called CRone of the few women poets writing today whose...
Literary responses Barbara Pym
Reviewers, including Elaine Feinstein and Penelope Fitzgerald ,
Allen, Orphia Jane. Barbara Pym: Writing a Life. Scarecrow Press, 1994.
213
were most of them low-key, though Bernard Levin greeted it with a broadside against its village setting, which, he said, reinforced his conviction that the best...
Literary responses Nina Bawden
Auberon Waugh 's review of the book was headed: If only nasty Laura had kept her clothes on . . . .
qtd. in
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
207
Elaine Feinstein , reviewing it along with Salman Rushdie 's Midnight's Children...
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.
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.
Elaine Feinstein , however, though she wrote that she found Johnson here at...
Literary responses D. H. Lawrence
Katherine Anne Porter 's opinion that the novel was the fevered day-dream of a dying man . . . indulging his sexual fantasies
qtd. in
Parkes, Adam. Modernism and the Theatre of Censorship. Oxford University Press, 1996.
111
was cited by the prosecution. Elaine Feinstein considers that the jury...
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.
TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012]. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-literary-supplement-historical-archive.
(25 February 1983): 175
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.
Reception Storm Jameson
SJ was offered the award of CBE in 1979, but declined.
“The Refuseniks and the Offers They Turned Down”. Sunday Times, 21 Dec. 2003, 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...
Reception Ruth Fainlight
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...

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...

Women writers item

About October 1973

The Women's Theatre Group (still in being as the Sphinx Theatre Company ) was founded in London as a feminist and socialist theatre group; its twin organization the Women's Theatre Company proved short-lived.
de Angelis, April. “Riddle of the Sphinx”. Guardian Unlimited, 10 Sept. 2005.
Hanna, Gillian, editor. Monstrous Regiment. Four Plays and a Collective Celebration. Nick Hern Books, 1991.
xx
“The Amiable Courtship of Miz Venus and Wild Bill - 197”. Sphinx Theatre Company Archive: Productions. 1970s.

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.
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Dated from the Bodleian Library acquisition stamp.

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).
de Angelis, April. “Riddle of the Sphinx”. Guardian Unlimited, 10 Sept. 2005.

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, 2 Jan. 2011, 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.
Feinstein, Elaine. Lawrence’s Women. HarperCollins, 1993.
Feinstein, Elaine. Loving Brecht. Hutchinson, 1992.
Weldon, Fay, and Elaine Feinstein, editors. New Stories 4. Hutchinson, 1979.
Feinstein, Elaine. Portraits. Carcanet, 2015.
Feinstein, Elaine. Pushkin. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998.
Feinstein, Elaine. Selected Poems. Carcanet, 1994.
Tsvetaeva, Marina Ivanovna, and Max Hayward. Selected Poems [of] Marina Tsvetayeva. Translator Feinstein, Elaine, Oxford University Press, 1971.
Feinstein, Elaine. Some Unease and Angels. Hutchinson, 1977.
Feinstein, Elaine. Talking to the Dead. Carcanet, 2007.
Feinstein, Elaine. Ted Hughes. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2001.
Feinstein, Elaine. The Amberstone Exit. Hutchinson, 1972.