A Description of Acquaintance: The Letters of Laura Riding and Gertrude Stein, 1927-1930 (Recencies Series: Research and Recovery in Twentieth-Century American Poetics)

Gertrude Stein and Laura Riding enjoyed a fascinating if brief three-year friendship via correspondence between 1927 and 1930, and in A Description of Acquaintance, Logan Esdale and Jane Malcolm make the letters available to a larger audience for the first time. Riding and Stein are important figures in twentieth-century poetry and poetics and are considered progenitors of later movements such as L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry. The editors contextualize their relationship and its time period with an introduction; annotations to the letters; and supplementary materials, including pieces by Stein and Riding that exemplify their singular perspectives on modernism as well as their personal poetics. The book provides unique insight into Stein’s and Riding’s writing processes as well as the larger literary world around them, making it a must-read for anyone interested in twentieth-century poetry.

Logan Esdale teaches in the Department of English at Chapman University and at California State University–Long Beach. He is the coeditor of Approaches to Teaching the Works of Gertrude Stein and the editor of a workshop edition of Stein’s 1941 novel Ida.

Jane Malcolm is an associate professor of English at the Université de Montréal. She is the coeditor of an edition of Laura Riding’s 1928 book of criticism Contemporaries and Snobs.