Elisaveta Fen (Lydia Jackson (née Lidiia Vitalevna Zhiburtovich))
(1899-1983), Novelist, autobiographer, translator and child pyschologistSitter in 1 portrait
Elisaveta Fen was the pseudonym of Lidiia Vitalievna Zhiburtovich, the Russian born daughter of a Tsarist official, who emigrated to England in 1925 after the Russian Revolution. She obtained a D.Phil. in psychology from Oxford University in 1949 and focused her practice on child psychology and psychotherapy. A writer, Fen translated the works of well known Russian authors and playwrights and wrote several autobiographical works about her childhood in Russia, including A Girl Grew Up in Russia and A Russian England.
Elisaveta Fen (Lydia Jackson (née Lidiia Vitalevna Zhiburtovich))
by Mark Gerson
bromide print, 1962
NPG x13369
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Peter Duby
23 March 2021, 13:31
Lydia Jackson wrote autobiographically under the name Elisaveta Fen (sometimes spelled Elisaveta). She married Meredith Jackson, a lecturer in law at Cambridge University in 1925. She was a fellow student and friend of Eileen Blair (nee O'Shaughnessy), the first wife of the author George Orwell (real name Eric Blair) and she wrote an article 'George Orwell's First Wife', that appeared in 'The Twentieth Century', Volume 168, No.1002, August 1960. Her body was cremated in Bristol.