Riding, Laura

▪ American poet and critic

née Reichenthal, married name Jackson, pseudonyms Barbara Rich, Madeleine Vara, and Laura Riding Gottschalk

born Jan. 16, 1901, New York, N.Y., U.S.

died Sept. 2, 1991, Sebastian, Fla.

      American poet, critic, and prose writer who was influential among the literary avant-garde during the 1920s and '30s.

      From 1918 to 1921 Riding attended Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., and soon her poetry began to gain attention. Early on she came to be associated with the Fugitives, a prominent group of Southern writers. Riding lived abroad from 1926 to 1939, much of the time with the poet and critic Robert Graves; together they established the Seizin Press (1927–38) and published the journal Epilogue (1935–38). Their book A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927, reprinted 1977) developed ideas of close textual analysis that influenced the New Criticism.

      In 1941 Riding married the critic Schuyler B. Jackson, and until his death in 1968 they worked together on lexicographical studies. She completed their “Rational Meaning: A New Foundation for the Definition of Words” in 1974, but it was not published. During this time Riding ceased to write poetry, which she renounced as being “inadequate.” Her Collected Poems, originally published in 1938, was issued in a revised edition in 1980.

* * *