Laura (Riding) Jackson (January 16, 1901 – September 2, 1991) was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
,
criticThe word critic comes from the Greek , "able to discern", which in turn derives from the word , meaning a person who offers reasoned judgment or analysis, value judgment, interpretation, or observation...
, novelist,
essayAn essay is usually a short piece of writing. It is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can be literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author....
ist and
short storyA short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format or medium tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels or books...
writer.
She was born Laura Reichenthal in
New YorkNew York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
to a family of
AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.3 million people in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west...
n Jewish immigrants, and educated at
Cornell UniversityCornell University is a private university located in Ithaca, New York, USA, that is a member of the Ivy League.Cornell counts more than 255,000 living alumni, 28 Rhodes Scholars and 41 Nobel laureates affiliated with the university as faculty or students...
, where she began to write poetry, publishing first (1923-26) under the name Laura Riding Gottschalk. She became associated with the Fugitives through
Allen TateJohn Orley Allen Tate was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1944.-Biography:...
, and they published her poems in
The Fugitive magazine.
Laura (Riding) Jackson (January 16, 1901 – September 2, 1991) was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
,
criticThe word critic comes from the Greek , "able to discern", which in turn derives from the word , meaning a person who offers reasoned judgment or analysis, value judgment, interpretation, or observation...
, novelist,
essayAn essay is usually a short piece of writing. It is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can be literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author....
ist and
short storyA short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format or medium tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels or books...
writer.
Early life
She was born Laura Reichenthal in
New YorkNew York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
to a family of
AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.3 million people in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west...
n Jewish immigrants, and educated at
Cornell UniversityCornell University is a private university located in Ithaca, New York, USA, that is a member of the Ivy League.Cornell counts more than 255,000 living alumni, 28 Rhodes Scholars and 41 Nobel laureates affiliated with the university as faculty or students...
, where she began to write poetry, publishing first (1923-26) under the name Laura Riding Gottschalk. She became associated with the Fugitives through
Allen TateJohn Orley Allen Tate was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1944.-Biography:...
, and they published her poems in
The Fugitive magazine. Her first marriage, to historian
Louis GottschalkLouis Gottschalk may refer to:*Louis M. Gottschalk , American composer*Louis F. Gottschalk , American composer *Louis A. Gottschalk, American psychiatrist...
(1899-1975), ended in divorce in 1925, at the end of which year she went to
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
at the invitation of
Robert GravesGraves considered himself a poet first and foremost. His poems, together with his translations and innovative interpretations of the Greek Myths, his memoir of the First World war, Good-bye to All That, and his historical study of poetic inspiration, The White Goddess, have never been out of...
and his wife
Nancy NicholsonNancy Nicholson was a British painter and fabric designer.She was sister to Ben Nicholson and daughter of the artist Sir William Nicholson....
. She would remain in Europe for nearly 14 years.
Poetry: association with Robert Graves
The excitement stirred by Laura Riding's poems is hinted at in Sonia Raiziss' later description: 'When
The Fugitive (1922-1925) flashed down the new sky of American poetry, it left a brilliant scatter of names: Ransom, Tate, Warren, Riding, Crane.... Among them, the inner circle and those tangent to it as contributors, there was no one quite like Laura Riding' ('An Appreciation',
Chelsea 12 1962, 28). Riding's first collection of poetry,
The Close Chaplet, was published in 1926, and during the following year she assumed the surname Riding. By this time the originality of her poetry was becoming ever more evident: generally she favoured a distinctive form of
free verseFree verse - also known as vers libre - is a term describing various styles of poetry that are written without using a strict rhyme scheme, but still recognizable as poetry by virtue of complex patterns of one sort or another that readers will perceive to be part of a coherent whole.-Types:Philip...
over conventional metres. She, Robert Graves, and Nancy Nicholson were based in
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
until Riding's failed suicide-attempt in 1929. It is generally agreed that this episode was a major cause of the break-up of Graves's first marriage: the whole affair caused a famous literary scandal.
Thereafter, until the outbreak of the
Spanish Civil WarThe Spanish Civil War was a major conflict that devastated Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939. It began after an attempted coup d'état by a group of Spanish Army generals against the government of the Second Spanish Republic, then under the leadership of president Manuel Azaña...
in 1936, Riding and Graves lived in
DeiàDeià is a small coastal village on the northern ridge of the Spanish island of Majorca. It is located about ten miles north of Valldemossa, and it is known for its literary and musical residents...
, Majorca, where they were visited by writers and artists including
James ReevesThe real name of James Reeves was John Morris , a British writer known for his poetry and contributions to children's literature and the literature of collected traditional songs.-Life:...
,
Norman CameronJ. Norman Cameron was a Scot and a poet, distantly related to Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay who, pre-war, associated on Majorca with Robert Graves and Laura Riding; and later, as a part time Fitzrovian, with Dylan Thomas, Geoffrey Grigson, Len Lye, John Aldridge RA, Alan Hodge and many others....
, John Aldridge,
Len LyeLen Lye, born Leonard Charles Huia Lye , was a New Zealand-born artist known primarily for his experimental films and kinetic sculpture...
,
Jacob BronowskiJacob Bronowski was a British mathematician and biologist of Polish-Jewish origin. He is best remembered as the presenter and writer of the 1973 BBC television documentary series, The Ascent of Man.-Life and work:...
, and Honor Wyatt. The house is now a museum (http://www.lacasaderobertgraves.com/).
Progress of Stories (1935) would later be highly esteemed by, among others,
John AshberyJohn Ashbery is an American poet. He has won nearly every major American award for poetry and is recognized as one of America's most important, though still controversial, poets...
and
Harry MathewsHarry Mathews is an American author of various novels, volumes of poetry and short fiction, and essays.-Life:Born in New York City to an upper middle class family, Mathews was educated at private schools there and at the Groton School in Massachusetts before enrolling at Princeton University in 1947...
. Between 1936 and 1939 Riding and Graves lived in England, France, and Switzerland; Graves accompanied Riding on her return to the USA in 1939.
Riding and Graves were highly productive from the start of their association, though after they moved to Majorca they became even more so. While still in London they had set up (1927) a private press (the
Seizin PressThe Seizin Press was a small press, founded in 1927 by Laura Riding and Robert Graves in London. From 1930 to 1937 it operated out of Majorca.Besides work by Graves and Riding, it published Gertrude Stein, Len Lye and James Reeves. It ceased on the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War; there was a...
), collaborated on
A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927) (which inspired Empson to write
Seven Types of Ambiguity and was in some respects the seed of the
New CriticismNew Criticism was a dominant trend in English and American literary criticism of the mid twentieth century, from the 1920s to the early 1960s. Its adherents were emphatic in their advocacy of close reading and attention to texts themselves, and their rejection of criticism based on extra-textual...
),
A Pamphlet Against Anthologies (1928), and other works. In Majorca the Seizin Press was enlarged to become a publishing imprint, producing
inter alia the substantial hardbound critical magazine
Epilogue (1935-1938), edited by Riding with Graves as associate editor. Throughout their association both of them steadily produced volumes of major poetry, culminating for each with a
Collected Poems in 1938.
Graves and Riding left Majorca in 1936 at the outbreak of the
Spanish Civil WarThe Spanish Civil War was a major conflict that devastated Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939. It began after an attempted coup d'état by a group of Spanish Army generals against the government of the Second Spanish Republic, then under the leadership of president Manuel Azaña...
. In 1939, they moved to the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and took lodging in
New Hope, PennsylvaniaNew Hope, formerly known as Coryell's Ferry, is a borough in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, USA. The population was 2,252 at the 2000 census.-Geography:New Hope is located at ....
. Their changing relationship is described by Elizabeth Friedmann in
A Mannered Grace, by Richard Perceval Graves in
Robert Graves: 1927-1940, The Years with Laura and by T.S. Matthews in
Jacks or Better (1977), and also was the basis for
Miranda SeymourMiranda Jane Seymour is an English literary critic, novelist, and biographer.Miranda Seymour was two years old when her parents moved into Thrumpton Hall, the family's ancestral home in Nottinghamshire. This celebrated Jacobean mansion is on the south bank of the River Trent at the secluded village...
's novel
The Summer of '39 (1998). In 1939 Riding and Graves parted, and in 1941 she married Schuyler B. Jackson, eventually settling in
Wabasso, FloridaWabasso is a census-designated place in Indian River County, Florida, United States. The population was 918 at the 2000 census. It is located on the intersections of CR 605, U.S...
, where she lived quietly and simply until her death in 1991, Schuyler having died in 1968. The vernacular "cracker" house in which they lived has been renovated and preserved by the Laura (Riding) Jackson Foundation.
Renunciation of poetry; Later Writings
In about 1941 Riding renounced poetry, though it would be fifteen to twenty years before she would feel able to begin explaining her reasons and exploring her unfolding findings. She withdrew from public literary life, working with Schuyler Jackson on a dictionary (published posthumously in 1997) that would lead them into an exploration of the foundations of meaning and language. In April 1962 she read "Introduction for a Broadcast" for the
BBC Third ProgrammeThe BBC Third Programme was a national radio network broadcast by the BBC. The network first went on air on 29 September 1946 and became one of the leading cultural and intellectual forces in Britain, playing a crucial role in disseminating the arts. It was the third national radio network...
, her first formal statement of her reasons for renouncing poetry (there had been a brief reference book entry in 1955). An expanded version of the piece was published that year in the New York magazine
ChelseaChelsea is a small American, twice-a-year literary magazine based in New York City. The influential journal, edited for many years by Sonia Raiziss, publishes poetry, prose, book reviews and translations with an emphasis on translations, art, and cross-cultural exchange,-History:In 1958, The...
, which also published "Further on Poetry" in 1964, writings on the theme of women-and-men in 1965 and 1974, and in 1967,
The Telling.
The 62 numbered passages of
The Telling, a 'personal evangel', formed the 'core part' of a book of the same title, thought by some to be her most important book alongside
Collected Poems. Writings and publications continued to flow throughout the sixties, seventies, and eighties, as Laura (Riding) Jackson (her authorial name from 1963-64 onwards) explored what she regarded as the truth-potential of language free from the artificial restrictions of poetic art. 'My faith in poetry was at heart a faith in language as the elementary wisdom', she had written in 1976 ('The Road To, In, And Away From, Poetry',
Reader 251). Her later writings attest to what she regarded as the truth-potential contained in language and in the human mind. She might be regarded as a spiritual teacher whose unusually high valuation of language led her to choose literature as the site for her work.
Two entire issues of
Chelsea were given over to new writings by her,
It Has Taken Long (1976) and
The Sufficient Difference (2001). Publication of her work has continued since her death in 1991, including
First Awakenings (her early poems) (1992),
Rational Meaning: A New Foundation for the Definition of Words (1997),
The Poems of Laura Riding, A Newly Revised Edition of the 1938/1980 Collection (2001), and
Under The Mind's Watch (2004). The most recent books to appear are
The Failure of Poetry, The Promise of Language (2007), and
On the Continuing of the Continuing (2008).
The Person I Am is forthcoming in 2008. Her works have been published in France, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Poland, and Brazil. The Laura (Riding) Jackson Board of Literary Management are her literary executors.
Selected Booklist
- The Close Chaplet (New York: Adelphi Company, 1926)
- A Survey of Modernist Poetry [with Robert Graves] (London: Heinemann, 1927; New York: Doubleday, 1928)
- Voltaire: A Biographical Fantasy [with Foreword, 1921] (London : Hogarth Press, 1927)
- Anarchism Is Not Enough (London: Cape; New York: Doubleday, 1928; new ed. Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 2001)
- Contemporaries And Snobs (London: Cape; New York: Doubleday, 1928)
- A Pamphlet Against Anthologies [with Robert Graves] (London: Cape; New York: Doubleday, 1928)
- Love as Death: Death as Love (Seizin Press, Hammersmith/London, 1928)
- Twenty Poems Less (Paris: Hours Press, 1930)
- Poems A Joking Word [with Preface] (London : Cape, 1930)
- Four Unposted Letters to Catherine (Paris: Hours Press, n.d.[1930])
- Experts Are Puzzled (London: Cape, 1930)
- Though Gently (Deya: Seizin Press, 1930)(reproduced, with responses from commentators and critics, in Delmar 8, Winter 2002)
- Laura and Francisca: a poem (Deya: Seizin Press, 1931)
- Everybody's Letters (London: Barker, 1933)
- The Life of the Dead. With Ten Illustrations by John Aldridge (London: Arthur Barker, 1933)
- Poet: A Lying Word (London: Barker, 1933)
- Focus I - IV (ed. with Robert Graves and others, four vols published, Deya, Majorca, 1935)
- Progress of Stories (Deya, Majorca: Seizin Press; London, Constable, 1935)
- Epilogue: a Critical Summary (ed. with Graves) (Deya: The Seizin Press; London: Constable, 1935-1938)
- A Trojan Ending (Deya, Majorca: Seizin Press; London: Constable, 1937)
- The Collected Poems of Laura Riding (London: Cassell; New York: Random House, 1938)
- The World and Ourselves (London: Chatto & Windus, 1938)
- Lives of Wives (London: Cassell, 1939)
- Selected Poems: In Five Sets (London: Faber, 1970; New York: Norton, 1973; New York: Persea, 1993)
- The Telling (Athlone 1972, Harper & Row 1973, Carcanet 2005)
- It Has Taken Long (Chelsea 35 [whole issue], New York, 1976)
- The Poems of Laura Riding: A New Edition of the 1938 Collection (Manchester: Carcanet; New York: Persea 1980)
- Some Communications of Broad Reference (Northridge, CA: Lord John Press, 1983)
- First Awakenings (Manchester: Carcanet; New York: Persea, 1992)
- The Word 'Woman' and Other related Writings (New York: Persea, 1993; Manchester: Carcanet, 1994)
- A Selection Of The Poems Of Laura Riding (edited with an Introduction by Robert Nye) (Manchester: Carcanet, 1994; New York: Persea, 1996)
- Rational Meaning: A New Foundation for the Definition of Words [with Schuyler B. Jackson] (edited by William Harmon) (University Press of Virginia, 1997)
- The Sufficient Difference: A Centenary Celebration of Laura (Riding) Jackson (guest-edited by Elizabeth Friedmann) (Chelsea 69 [whole issue], New York, Dec. 2000)
- The Poems of Laura Riding Newly Revised Edition (edited by Mark Jacobs, Note on the Text by Alan J. Clark) (New York: Persea, 2001)
- Under The Mind's Watch: Concerning Issues Of Language, Literature, Life Of Contemporary Bearing (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2004)(edited by John Nolan and Alan J. Clark)
- The Failure of Poetry, The Promise of Language (edited by John Nolan) (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007)
- On the Continuing of the Continuing (London: Wyeswood Press, 2008) (fine-printed limited edition)
- The Person I Am (edited by John Nolan and Carroll Ann Friedmann) (Trent Editions, Nottingham Trent University, two volumes, forthcoming 2009)
Further reading
- Elizabeth Friedmann, A Mannered Grace: the Life of Laura (Riding) Jackson (Persea Books, 2005). ISBN 0-89255-300-6
- Alan J. Clark, "Laura (Riding) Jackson: a revised check-list March 1923-January 2001", pp.147-179 in The Sufficient Difference: a Centenary Celebration of Laura (Riding) Jackson (NY: Chelsea Associates, 2000) (Chelsea 69). ISSN 0009-2185. Also available at http://www.ntu.ac.uk/laura_riding
- Elizabeth Friedmann (ed), The Laura (Riding) Jackson Reader (Persea Books, 2005). ISBN 0-89255-263-8
- Paul Auster, "Truth, Beauty, Silence" (Picador, 2005). ISBN 0-312-42468-X
External links