Laura Riding

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Standard Name: Riding, Laura
Birth Name: Laura Reichenthal
Married Name: Laura Gottschalk
Self-constructed Name: Laura Riding Gottschalk
Self-constructed Name: Laura Riding
Pseudonym: Madeleine Vara
Married Name: Laura Jackson
Indexed Name: Laura Riding Jackson
Self-constructed Name: Laura (Riding) Jackson
LR , an American who spent crucial years of her astonishingly productive life in England and Europe, was an important modernist poet, critic, and theorist, who regarded her poetry as a tool in the search for truth. One of the remarkable features in her career was her capacity to inspire and energise other writers to contribute to her large-scale collaborative projects: a kind of encyclopaedia, a periodical, an unusual dictionary. Generally oppositional, unconcerned about being out of step with most avant-garde opinion, she maintained her own viewpoint tenaciously as the only correct one, and claimed to have influenced and been borrowed from by many of the most distinguished names of her generation. She refused to let her work appear in all-women contexts. When she lost confidence in poetry as a vehicle for the truth (moving instead towards aspects of the study of language), she almost entirely gave up writing it, and allowed reprinting of her own earlier work only with prefatory material to explain her new and different position.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Intertextuality and Influence William Empson
His preface to the first edition acknowledges the influence of I. A. Richards —with whom, however, he also says he disagrees in principle. Richards had been his undergraduate supervisor, and tradition (only slightly exaggerated, says...
Literary responses Gertrude Stein
GS 's writing has been ruffling critics since Laura Riding wrote in 1927 of her literalism, simple-mindedness, and successful barbarism.
Hoffmann, Michael J. “Gertrude Stein in the Psychology Laboratory”. American Quarterly, Vol.
17
, No. 1, 1 Mar.–31 May 1965, pp. 127-32.
130
In 1945 Hugh Walpole painted Stein as a self-adoring priestess of her own...
Occupation Nancy Cunard
Her purpose in founding the press was to publish mainly contemporary poetry of an experimental kind. Virginia Woolf warned her that Your hands will always be covered with ink,
Ford, Hugh, editor. Nancy Cunard: Brave Poet, Indomitable Rebel 1896-1965. Chilton Book Company, 1968.
69
but the Hours Press became...
Reception Dorothy Wellesley
W. B. Yeats , then aged seventy, discovered DW 's writing in 1935 when he was ill in bed and was at work on The Oxford Book of Modern Verse. He was feeling disillusioned...
Textual Features Germaine Greer
The selection of poets is highly informed. It reaches back in time before GG 's anthology Kissing the Rod, to Anne Askew and Isabella Whitney , and forward to Carol Ann Duffy and Margaret Atwood
Textual Features Fleur Adcock
She relates how in reading for the anthology she made discoveries and underwent conversions—one result of which had to be the jettisoning of some early choices whose phantoms later, for her, haunted the volume...
Textual Production Wyndham Lewis
WL 's little magazine The Enemy ran for three numbers. It contained the text of his Time and Western Man (also published in book form in 1927), as well as essays by himself and poems...
Travel Elizabeth Bishop
Laura Riding was then resident on Mallorca with Robert Graves . EB was in Europe again in 1937, then not again until a visit to England in 1964, followed by three more, in 1966, 1976...

Timeline

18 November 1929: Robert Graves's First World War autobiography...

Writing climate item

18 November 1929

Robert Graves 's First World War autobiography Goodbye to All That was published in London.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
(8 November 1929): 20
Burrow, Colin. “Adjusting the Mechanism”. London Review of Books, Vol.
40
, No. 19bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb, 11 Oct. 2018, pp. 31-4.
31

July 1932: Arthur Barker founded his own publishing...

Writing climate item

July 1932

Arthur Barker founded his own publishing firm, Arthur Barker Limited , at 21 Garrick Street, London.
Rose, Jonathan, and Patricia J. Anderson, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 112. Gale Research, 1991.
35

May 1934: Robert Graves's historical novel I, Claudius,...

Writing climate item

May 1934

Robert Graves 's historical novel I, Claudius, narrated in the first person by a Roman emperor whose reputation with posterity was that of an idiot, was published to enthusiastic reviews.
Friedmann, Elizabeth. A Mannered Grace. Persea Books, 2005.
226
Burrow, Colin. “Adjusting the Mechanism”. London Review of Books, Vol.
40
, No. 19bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb, 11 Oct. 2018, pp. 31-4.
31

Early 1936: The Faber Book of Modern Verse, edited by...

Writing climate item

Early 1936

The Faber Book of Modern Verse, edited by Michael Roberts (who was put forward for this task by T. S. Eliot ), set out to define the modern movement, not just chronologically but according...

Texts

Riding, Laura, and George Ellidge. 14A. Arthur Barker, 1934.
Riding, Laura, and Robert von Ranke Graves. A Pamphlet Against Anthologies. Jonathan Cape, 1928.
Riding, Laura, and Robert von Ranke Graves. A Survey of Modernist Poetry. Heinemann, 1927.
Riding, Laura. A Trojan Ending. Seizin Press; Constable, 1937.
Riding, Laura. Americans. Primavera Press, 1934.
Riding, Laura. Anarchism Is Not Enough. Jonathan Cape, 1928.
Riding, Laura. Collected Poems. Cassell, 1938.
Riding, Laura. Contemporaries and Snobs. Jonathan Cape, 1928.
Riding, Laura. Convalescent Conversations. Seizin Press; Constable, 1936.
Riding, Laura, and Robert von Ranke Graves, editors. Epilogue: A Critical Summary. Seizin Press; Constable; Chatto and Windus, 4 vols.
Riding, Laura, editor. Everybody’s Letters. Arthur Barker, 1933.
Riding, Laura. Experts Are Puzzled. Jonathan Cape, 1930.
Riding, Laura. First Awakenings. Editors Friedmann, Elizabeth et al., Persea Books, 1992.
Riding, Laura. Four Unposted Letters to Catherine. Hours Press, 1930.
Riding, Laura, and Len Lye. Laura and Francisca. Seizin Press, 1931.
Riding, Laura. Lives of Wives. Cassell, 1939.
Riding, Laura. Love as Love, Death as Death. Seizin, 1928.
Riding, Laura. Personal Letter, With a Request for a Reply. Privately printed for private circulation, 1937.
Riding, Laura. Poems: A Joking Word. Jonathan Cape, 1930.
Riding, Laura. Poet: A Lying Word. Arthur Barker, 1933.
Riding, Laura. Progress of Stories. Seizin Press; Constable, 1935.
Riding, Laura et al. Rational Meaning. Editor Harmon, William, University Press of Virginia, 1997.
Riding, Laura. Selected Poems: in Five Sets. Faber and Faber, 1970.
Riding, Laura. The Close Chaplet. Hogarth Press, 1926.
Riding, Laura et al. The Life of the Dead. Arthur Barker, 1933.