Laura (Riding) Jackson exhibition opens on Oct. 8 with a symposium

Painting by John Aldridge of Laura (Riding) Jackson, 1933, in Majorca Nicola Kountoupes/University Photography

A major exhibition about the literary career of Laura (Riding) Jackson will open Oct. 8 in the Exhibition Gallery of the Carl A. Kroch Library on campus. Titled Laura (Riding) Jackson and the Promise of Language, the exhibit features books, letters, photographs, manuscripts and other materials from the Laura (Riding) Jackson and Schuyler B. Jackson Collection of the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections in the Cornell University Library.

Contemporary scholars, readers and critics from around the world are discovering and rediscovering (Riding) Jackson. Many of them will gather in Ithaca Oct. 8-9 to participate in a symposium, also titled "Laura (Riding) Jackson and the Promise of Language." Featured speakers include poet and critic Charles Bernstein from SUNY Buffalo and Jerome McGann of the University of Virginia. Also present will be Elizabeth Friedmann, (Riding) Jackson's official biographer, who will speak on the relationship between her life and work, and members of the Laura (Riding) Jackson Board of Literary Management. Invited panelists will explore subjects ranging from (Riding) Jackson's poetry, prose and fiction to her critical reception during and following her life.

When (Riding) Jackson died in 1991, she left behind a legacy of literary works, writings on language, some notoriety and not a little controversy. As an alumna with fond memories of Cornell, she gave her papers to the Cornell Library, including not only manuscripts and correspondence but also her own retrospective commentary on some of her work. She first donated literary papers to Cornell in 1965, continuing to add to the collection throughout the last years of her life and bequeathing the remainder.

Laura (Riding) Jackson's multifaceted and demanding literary career spanned seven decades, beginning in the 1920s with her association with the circle of Southern writers known as the Fugitives.

A poet who later renounced poetry, a literary critic, an editor, a printer/publisher and an ardent thinker on language and its relation to truth, (Riding) Jackson wrote extensively in a variety of genres and exchanged ideas with Hart Crane, Allen Tate, Robert Graves, Gertrude Stein and other leading luminaries of the period.

Her life was one of transformation, each stage of it marked by a change of name. The exhibition provides a chronological overview, moving from her childhood as Laura Reichenthal in Brooklyn and her student days at Cornell; through her bohemian life as poet Laura Riding and her 13-year association with Robert Graves; and finally through her marriage to literary critic Schuyler B. Jackson and her years in Wabasso, Fla., where she spent the last 40 years of her life as Laura (Riding) Jackson.

The exhibition and symposium are sponsored by Cornell Library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, with the assistance of the Sonia Raizzis Giop Charitable Foundation and the Laura (Riding) Jackson Board of Literary Management. For more information contact: Lorna Knight, curator of manuscripts, 2B Kroch Library; phone: 255-3530; fax: 255-9524; and e-mail: lmk22@cornell.edu.

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