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 most newspapers. In 1959 Charles Olson sent her his famous letter defining breath prosody, but she developed her own voice through making versions of the poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, a New York Times Book of the Year. She has travelled extensively, to read her poetry at major festivals across the world has been translated into most European languages. In 1981 she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and later served on the Council. In 1990, she received a Cholmondeley Award for Poetry, and was given an Honorary D.Litt from the University of Leicester. In the same year, her novel Mother's Girl was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times fiction prize. In 2004 she received a major Arts Council Award for The Russian Jerusalem. Her first novel, The Circle (1970) was long listed for the 'lost' Man Booker prize in 2010. Her five biographies include Ted Hughes: The Life of a Poet (2001) shortlisted for the biennial Marsh Biography Prize, and re-issued in 2016; and Anna of all the Russias: The life of Annna 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 Chairman of the Judges for the T.S. Eliot Prize in 1995.