About Bernice Rubens

Bernice Rubens (26 July 1923 – 13 October 2004) was a Welsh novelist. She became the first woman to win the Booker Prize in 1970, for The Elected Member.

Bernice Ruth Reuben was born in Splott, Cardiff, Wales, on 26 July 1923, the third of four children of Eli Reuben and his wife Dorothy, née Cohen. Her father was a Lithuanian Jew who, at the age of 16, left mainland Europe in 1900 in the hope of starting a new life in New York City. Due to being swindled by a ticket tout, he never reached the United States, his passage taking him no further than Cardiff.[2] He decided to stay in Wales, and there he met and married Dorothy Cohen, whose Polish family had also emigrated to Cardiff.

Bernice was one of four children and came from a musical family, both her brothers, Harold and Cyril, becoming well-known classical musicians. Harold was forced to quit playing through illness, but Cyril became a violinist in the London Symphony Orchestra. Bernice failed to follow in her family's musical tradition, though she would later learn the cello. She was educated at Cardiff High School for Girls and later read English at the University of Wales, Cardiff, where she was awarded her BA in 1947.