Laura Riding Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Laura Riding Jackson (1901-1991) was a United States poet and novelist, particularly known for her association with Robert Graves. She was born Laura Reichenthal in New York to a family of Austrian immigrants, and educated at Cornell University. Her first marriage, to Louis Gottschalt, ended in divorce in 1925, at which point she went to live in Europe where she would remain for many years. Her first collection of poetry, The Close Chaplet, was published in 1926, and it was at this point that she assumed the surname Riding. Shortly afterwards she met Graves, and lived with him in his Mediterranean exile, collaborating with him on A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927) which some believe inaugurated the New Criticism. Eventually, they parted and she married Schuyler B. Jackson in 1941.Riding began by taking a neo-Platonic view of poetry, in that she viewed poetry as the conduit for metaphysical truths. After World War II she lost her faith in poetry, however, and 'renounced' it, choosing to concentrate on her linguistics influenced philosophy. This was a famous decision, and in some ways indicative of the renunciation of Platonism and Metaphysics after World War II that goes by the name of Post-Modernism. Therefore, her Collected Poems is one of the key Modernist texts. Progress of Stories is probably her best prose work.