Vera Rich was educated at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford and Bedford College, London. She began studying Byelorussian when still a schoolgirl and has been working on material for this book over the last twenty years. Miss Rich has published three books of original poetry, two volumes of translations from the Ukrainian, and translations of poetry from Polish, Old English and Old Norse. She is also Soviet correspondent for a major scientific magazine and has translated a number of scientific works from Russian and Ukrainian. In 1961 she was chosen by the Congress of the USA to translate the inscription for the monument, which was unveiled in Washington in 1964, to the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko as a ‘champion of freedom’. Vera Rich has lectured on Slavonic literatures at the University of Birmingham and to literary societies and organisations in London, Edinburgh, Munich, Utrecht and Paris. Of her recent translation of Lesya Ukrainka (1968), Victor Buyniak wrote in the Slavic Review, ‘Vera Rich’s translations are accurate and accomplished in a rich, flowing style’.