Elaine Feinstein read English at Cambridge, and lived there for a quarter of a century with her husband and three children, supervising undergraduates and writing poems, novels and plays, as well as reviews for London newspapers. She has appeared at major festivals across the world and has been translated into most European languages. In 1981 Feinstein was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and later served on its Council. In 1990 she received a Cholmondeley Award for Poetry, and was given an Honorary D. Litt from the University of Leicester. Her novel Mother's Girl was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize in the same year. Her first novel, The Circle (1970) was longlisted
for the 'lost' Man Booker prize in 2010. Her five biographies include Ted Hughes: The Life of a Poet (2001; 2016), shortlisted for the Marsh Biography Prize; and Anna of all the Russias: The Life of Anna Akhmatova (2005), which has been translated into twelve languages, including Russian. She has served as a judge for all the major literary awards, and was Chair of the Judges for the T. S. Eliot Prize in 1995. She received an Arts Council Award for her work on The Russian Jerusalem (2004).
