Rae Dalven (1904-1992) was a translator of modern Greek poets and historian of Greek Jews. Born in Preveza, Greece, she soon immigrated to the United States with her family. Dalven graduated from Hunter College and earned a doctorate in English at New York University. Her notable translations include Modern Greek Poetry (1949), The Complete Poems of Cavafy (1961) and The Fourth Dimension (1977). She also wrote two plays, A Season in Hell, which premiered Off Broadway in 1950, and Our Kind of People, an autobiographical story about a family of Greek-Jewish immigrants.
In addition to teaching English literature and being the department chairwoman at Ladycliff College in Highland Falls, New York, Dalven was the editor of The Sephardic Scholar, a board member of the American Friends of the Jewish Museum of Greece, and a past president of the American Society of Sephardic Studies and of the Sisterhood of Janina, a Romaniote group. She passed away in Manhattan at the age of 87.
