Fiona Ruth Sampson MBE FRSL[1] is a British poet, literary biographer, writer on ecology, editor, translator and scholar.

Sampson was educated at the Royal Academy of Music and then studied at Oxford University, where she won the Newdigate Prize.

[2] She gained a PhD in the philosophy of language from Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.

[6] Her eighth collection, Come Down (2019) won the poetry section of the Wales Book of the Year.

[16] This was followed by Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (2021),[17] which was longlisted for the 2021 Biographers International Organisation Plutarch Prize.

Sampson is a former musician and has worked with composers, including commissions with Sally Beamish,[19] Stephen Goss[20] and Philip Grange.

Sampson is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, where she has served on the Council, and of the English Association and the Wordsworth Trust.