Background
Priscilla Denise Levertov was born in Ilford, Essex, England on October 24, 1923. She was the daughter of Beatrice Adelaide (Spooner-Jones) Levertoff and Paul Levertoff, who had been a teacher at Leipzig University and as a Russian Hasidic Jew was held under house arrest during the First World War as an 'enemy alien' by virtue of his ethnicity.