Raine, Kathleen (1908–2003)

English poet. Born Kathleen Jessie Raine in Ilford, Essex, England, June 14, 1908; died July 7, 2003, in London; dau. of George Raine (schoolteacher and Methodist preacher) and Jessie (Wilkie) Raine; Girton College, Cambridge University, MA, 1929; m. Hugh Sykes Davies (professor at Cambridge), c. 1930 (div.); m. Charles Madge (prominent sociologist, div.); children: (2nd m.) Anna and James.

Romantic poet who also produced major works of criticism on William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and W.B. Yeats, received a scholarship to study science at Cambridge (1926); settled in Penrith, Northumberland (1939); returned to wartime London and published 1st vol. of poems, Stone and Flower (1943); converted to Catholicism (c. 1944); had a long and unhappy relationship with the travel writer and naturalist Gavin Maxwell (1952–69); held post as research fellow, Girton College, Cambridge University (1955–61); was Andrew Mellon Lecturer, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (1962); founded literary journal Temenos (1980); also achieved a reputation as a translator of Honoré de Balzac. Poetry includes The Pythoness (1949), The Hollow Hill (1965), Six Dreams (1968), and Living with Mystery, Poems 1987–1991 (1992). Won W.H. Smith Award (1972); received Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (1993).

See also autobiographies Farewell Happy Fields: Memories of Childhood (1973), The Lands Unknown (1975), and The Lion's Mouth: Concluding Chapters of Autobiography (1977); and Women in World History.