Joyce Wexler


Laura Riding's Pursuit of Truth

OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS, ATHENS, OHIO

ISBN 0-8214-0364-8

Laura Riding’s Pursuit of Truth by Joyce Piell Wexler was the first critical biography of Laura Riding. The TLS of 18 July 1980 recognized it in a prominent review essay by Julian Symons, who had met Riding in the 1930s. In Symons’ judgment, “Wexler’s book is an excellent introduction to the work and provides a useful brief biography,” adding that “Wexler is respectful but not reverent.” Wexler’s three-year correspondence with Riding informs interpretations of her poems, essays, and stories. The book’s twelve chapters cover Riding’s life and work from her early association with the Fugitive Group of American poets to her renunciation of poetry in favor of what she called pure truth-telling. Wexler discusses Riding’s relationships with Robert Graves, Nancy Nicholson, and Geoffrey Phibbs, her almost fatal “leap” from a high window in 1929, her years with Graves in Mallorca, her collaborations with other writers in the 1930s, and her marriage to Schuyler B. Jackson in 1941.

Laura Riding: A Bibliography

Joyce Piell Wexler

Garland Publishing Inc, New York & London 1981
ISBN 0-8240-9476-X
(with illustrations)