Laura Riding

Laura (Riding) Jackson (January 16, 1901 – September 2, 1991) was an American poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer. She was born Laura Reichenthal in New York to a family of Austrian Jewish immigrants, and educated at Cornell University, where she began to write poetry, publishing first (1923-26) under the name Laura Riding Gottschalk. She became associated with the Fugitives through Allen Tate, and they published her poems in ... more

Laura (Riding) Jackson (January 16, 1901 – September 2, 1991) was an American poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer. She was born Laura Reichenthal in New York to a family of Austrian Jewish immigrants, and educated at Cornell University, where she began to write poetry, publishing first (1923-26) under the name Laura Riding Gottschalk. She became associated with the Fugitives through Allen Tate, and they published her poems in The Fugitive magazine. Her first marriage, to historian Louis Gottschalk (1899-1975), ended in divorce in 1925, at the end of which year she went to England at the invitation of Robert Graves and his wife Nancy Nicholson. She would remain in Europe for nearly 14 years. The excitement stirred by Laura Riding's poems is hinted at in Sonia Raiziss' later description: 'When The Fugitive (1922-1925) flashed down the new sky of American poetry, it left a brilliant scatter of names: Ransom, Tate, Warren, Riding, Crane.... Among them, the inner circle... less