author
Laura Riding
1901–1991
A fiercely original modernist poet and thinker, Laura Riding pushed poetry toward questions of truth, language, and identity. Her remarkable career ranged from avant-garde verse and literary criticism to fiction, publishing, and a later rejection of poetry itself.
3 Audiobooks
A survey of modernist poetry
by Laura Riding, Robert Graves
Anarchism is not enough
by Laura Riding
A pamphlet against anthologies
by Laura Riding, Robert Graves
About the author
Born Laura Reichenthal in New York City in 1901, she studied at Cornell University and first gained attention through the literary group known as the Fugitives. Her early poetry, including The Close Chaplet (1926) and Collected Poems (1938), established her as an important and unconventional voice in modernist literature.
Riding spent many years in Europe, where she worked closely with Robert Graves. Together they founded Seizin Press and wrote A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927), a critical study whose methods helped anticipate the New Criticism. She also published fiction, essays, criticism, and short stories.
Around the early 1940s, Riding renounced poetry and turned increasingly to the study of language and meaning. Later known as Laura (Riding) Jackson, she continued writing and collaborated with her husband, Schuyler Jackson, on Rational Meaning: A New Foundation for the Definition of Words, published posthumously in 1997. She died in Florida in 1991 and received the Bollingen Prize for Poetry that same year.