Jackson, Laura (Riding), 1901-

The following is from the Laura Riding Jackson entry in Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series, Volume 28 (1981). Material within quotation marks represents Jackson's comments as submitted for inclusion in the entry. The entry also includes detailed remarks on Jackson's career from other sources (these are not reproduced here.

PERSONAL: Born 16 January 1901, in New York, N.Y.; name originally Laura Reichenthal; adopted the surname Riding, 1926; daughter of Nathaniel S. and Sarah (Edersheim) Reichenthal; married Louis Gottchalk (a professor of history), 1920 (divorced, 1925); married Schuyler Brinckerhoff Jackson (a poet, critic, and former poetry editor of Time magazine), 20 June 1941 (died, 1968). Education: Attended Cornell University, 1918-1921; further study at University of Illinois, Urbana, and University of Louisville.

CAREER: Poet, critic, and author in various fields with progressive concern with language as the natural human truth-system. Regular member of the Fugitives, a group of Southern poets, including John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and Robert Penn Warren, in the 1920s; lived abroad, 1926-1939, mainly in England and Spain; worked at furthering sensitivity of writer-associates, poets especially, to the importance of linguistic integrity as the basis of literary integrity. Founder, with Robert Graves, and managing partner of Seizin Press, 1927-1938; founder, with Graves, and editor of Epilogue, a series of volumes in which new principles of general criticism were explored, 1935-1938. Returned to the United States, 1939; beginning in 1943, involved in citrus farming in Florida with husband, Schuyler B. Jackson, and in working with him towards the enlargement of the knowledge of words and capability of using them in truthfully exact consciousness of their meanings--towards the initiating of a new lexicography.

AWARDS/HONORS: Nashville prize, 1924; Mark Rothko Appreciation award, 1971; Guggenheim fellowship, 1973; National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, 1979.

WRITINGS: Note that Jackson's works have been published under the names Laura Riding, Laura Riding Gottschalk, and Laura (Riding) Jackson, and Madeleine Vara. In addition to the works listed here, there were also numerous translations of works in French; and essays and journal articles on poetry and other literary forms.

Poetry:

• 1926: The Close Chaplet
• 1927: Voltaire: A Biographical Fantasy
• 1928: Love as Love, Death as Death
• 1930: Poems: A Joking Word
• 1930: Twenty Poems Less
• 1930: Though Gently
• 1931: Laura and Francisca
• 1933: The Life of the Dead
• 1933: The First Leaf
• 1933: Poet: A Lying Word
• 1934: Americans
• 1935: The Second Leaf
• 1938: Collected Poems (reprinted as The Poems of Laura Riding: A New Edition of the 1938 Collection, 1980)
• 1970: Selected Poems: In Five Set

Novels:

• 1936: 14A
• 1936: Convalescent Conversations
• 1937: A Trojan Ending with new edition in 1984)

Editor:

• 1933: Everybody's Letters
• 1935 - 1937 : Epilogue: A Critical Summary
• 1938: The World and Ourselves

From the guide to the Laura (Riding) Jackson Papers (#4542), 1974-1989, (Southern Historical Collection)