Elisaveta Fen (1899–1983)

Elisaveta Fen was the pseudonym of Lidiia Vitalievna Zhiburtovich (or Jiburtovich), the daughter of a Russian Tsarist official. Her family was a privileged one and she enjoyed a comfortable childhood and an excellent education. She began to write at an early age. In 1925, after the world she had known was shattered by the Russian Revolution, she emigrated to England. There she worked as a journalist and published several well-received translations of the stories and plays of Anton Chekhov and other Russian authors. She wrote her own novels under her pen name, including All Thy Waves (1977), Spring Floods (1979), and The Ebb (1981). She also wrote four volumes of her autobiography: A Girl Grew Up in Russia, A Russian Childhood, Remember Russia, and A Russian's England. In addition, she earned a D.Phil. in psychology from Oxford University in 1949 and as Lydia Jackson -- her married name -- had a successful parallel career as a child psychologist and psychotherapist and published three books on psychology.