Edith Finch, Countess Russell (1900-1978) was an author and Bertrand Russell's fourth and last wife. She was born to Edward Bronson Finch, a physician, and his wife, Delia, in New York City. She studied at Bryn Mawr College (A.B. 1922) and St Hilda's College, Oxford where she was awarded degrees in 1925 and 1926. She was employed as an instructor of English literature at Bryn Mawr, but did not hold a permanent position on the faculty. Finch traveled extensively in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, while continuing to write and lecture. She published biographies of Wilfred Scawen Blunt in 1938 and M. Carey Thomas, a president of Bryn Mawr, in 1947. Finch first met Bertrand Russell in the 1930s through her close friend and housemate Lucy Martin Donnelly, who was a friend of Russell's first wife, Alys. Finch moved to England in 1950 and married Russell in December 1952. The couple settled in Wales, where Bertrand died in 1970 and Edith died in 1978.
Famous quotes containing the words edith, finch and/or russell:
“When a woman behaves like a man why doesn’t she behave like a nice man?”
—Dame Edith Evans (1888–1976)
“By the flow of the inland river,
Whence the fleets of iron have fled,
Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,
Asleep are the ranks of the dead:—”
—Francis Miles Finch (1827–1907)
“Dear common flower, that grow’st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May,
Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold,
Hight-hearted buccaneers, o’erjoyed that they
An Eldorado in the grass have found,
Which not the rich earth’s ample round
May match in wealth—thou art more dear to me
Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)