In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding

Baker, Deborah

ISBN 10: 0802113648 / ISBN 13: 9780802113641

Published by Grove Press, New York, 1993

About this Item

478 pp., b/w photos, notes, index. In her poetry, fiction, essays, and public statements, Laura Riding tackled Freud, feminism, communism, language and belief, sexuality, and the coming of age of the American dream. Her range of associations includes writers such as Hart Crane, Gertrude Stein, Allen Tate, and Robert Penn Warren. Now comes a brilliantly original biography of her life.

Seller Inventory # 6940

Bibliographic Details

• Title: In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding
• Publisher: Grove Press, New York
• Publication Date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802113648
• ISBN 13: 9780802113641
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Literary Lives / Literary criticism & commentary

About this title

Synopsis

In her poetry, fiction, essays, and public statements, Laura Riding tackled Freud, feminism, communism, language and belief, sexuality, and the coming of age of the American dream. Her range of associations includes writers such as Hart Crane, Gertrude Stein, Allen Tate, and Robert Penn Warren. Now comes a brilliantly original biography of her life. 16 pages of photographs.

From the Back Cover

In her poetry, fiction, essays, and public statements, Laura Riding, the author of twenty-three books, tackled feminism, communism, sexuality, Freud, language and belief, and the coming-of-age of the American dream. In her personal relationships she was often at the center of a circle of friends and artists whose activities she inspired and sometimes controlled. Her extraordinary range of associates included writers as diverse as Hart Crane, Gertrude Stein, Edmund Wilson, Malcolm Cowley, Allen Tate, and Robert Penn Warren. During a long and "scandalous" affair with Robert Graves, she watched over his most productive period and guided much of his best work. Together they launched the New Criticism. Laura Riding, who died in 1991 at the age of ninety, was a deeply divided woman whose ability to create a personal mythology and continually reimagine herself could be both astonishing and maddening. The frequent subject of outrageous rumor and intense controversy, she has been portrayed as a megalomaniac, a sexual libertine, a femme fatale, even a witch. In this biography, Deborah Baker considers Laura Riding in the context of her background, her times, and, most importantly, her work. She removes the layers of conjecture, bias, and sometimes sheer nonsense that have distorted Riding's life, reputation, and scale of achievement.