Betti Alver is one of the most outstanding representatives of Estonian poetry in the twentieth century. She belongs to the generation that came on the scene in the 1930s--toward the end of Estonian independence and on the eve of World War II. Nevertheless, she was also a contemporary of later generations of poets and took part in the renewal of Estonian postwar poetry in the 1960s and 1970s. Alver's verse represents high achievement in Estonian poetry with respect to poetic form and language.

She was born Elisabet Alver on 23 November 1906 in Jõgeva in the province of Tartumaa to Minna and Mart Alver. She was the youngest of six children, but most of her siblings died in infancy; Alver was raised along with a single surviving brother, who was four years older. Her father was of peasant origin but worked as a railway official at that time...