Background
Dachine Rainer was born Sylvia Newman in New York on January 13, 1921, the daughter of Polish Jews, and grew up in Manhattan.
Dachine Rainer was born Sylvia Newman in New York on January 13, 1921, the daughter of Polish Jews, and grew up in Manhattan.
She earned a scholarship to study English Literature at Hunter College and around this time settled on her nom de plume. During the next 20 years she had poems, essays, and articles published in many American periodicals, among them The New Republic and The Nation. In 1958 her novella "A Room at the Inn" was published, followed two years later by another book called "The Uncomfortable Inn".
Rainer is buried in Highgate Cemetery, where her tombstone reads "Poet and Anarchist".
As a child her political views were influenced by the executions in 1927 of the Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.