Feinstein, Elaine (1930– )

English poet, novelist, and translator. Her verse, first published in In a Green Eye (1966), has an international flavour as well as reflecting a wide variety of forms. Her Selected Poems was published in 1994. Her novels, such as her first, The Circle (1970), often explore female identity and family relationships; several, such as The Border (1984), have Jewish themes.

She was born in Bootle, Lancashire, and educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. Loving Brecht (1992) is a novel about the women in the life of the dramatist Bertolt Brecht. Lawrence and the Women (1992) is a biographical study of D H Lawrence. She has also written plays for radio and television.

Her poetic impulse springs notably from Russian poet Marina Tsvetayeva, whose Selected Poems she translated in 1971 and whose biography she wrote in 1987, and Charles Olson, with whom she exchanged letters.