Carcanet has now published Selected Essays from Epilogue: Laura Riding and Robert Graves, with a preface by Mark Jacobs.

The Epilogue essays, published when the literary partnership of Laura Riding and Robert Graves was at its height, illustrate their working relationship and the background to their later careers.

Conceived in the mid-1930s by Laura Riding, Epilogue: A Critical Summary was originally to be called The Critical Vulgate, a title suggesting that the thematic concerns of the project would go well beyond the merely literary, attempting to discover, in a secular spirit reminiscent of Voltaire's, the truth regarding all sorts of subjects, from God down.

The original four volumes, published by Seizin Press and Constable jointly, are now extremely scarce. Quite apart from their considerable intrinsic interest, they offer rich source material for the two authors. Laura (Riding) Jackson never reprinted any of her Epilogue work, while Robert Graves republished some of his, in revised form. This selection alerts general readers to a rigorous, impassioned and remarkably alive creative and critical moment.
 

Chelsea 69
Guest-edited by Elizabeth Friedmann

This special issue of Chelsea, appearing in December 2000, features previously unpublished prose, poetry, and correspondence by Laura (Riding) Jackson.  There are introductions and essays by Elizabeth Friedmann, John Nolan, Amber Vogel, and William Harmon.  And a bibliographical checklist (1921-2001) has been compiled by Alan J. Clark.  See the Table of Contents
 
 

The exhibition Laura (Riding) Jackson and the Promise of Language featured books, letters, photographs, manuscripts, and other materials primarily from the Laura (Riding) Jackson and Schuyler B. Jackson collection held by the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. Cornell's web-site contains more information about the exhibition and collection.
 

An international gathering of scholars, including Laura (Riding) Jackson's authorized biographer, students of her poetry, stories, criticism, and thought, and publishers of her work, offered two full days of panel discussions and related presentations in a symposium timed to coincide with the opening of the first exhibition drawn from the extensive Laura (Riding) Jackson and Schyuler B. Jackson Collection held in the Cornell University Library. For this occasion, both a guide to the collection and an exhibition catalog were made available, and most restrictions on scholarly access to the Collection were permanently lifted.

The symposium and exhibition were co-sponsored by the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library, and by the Laura (Riding) Jackson Board of Literary Management, with additional funding provided by the Sonia Raiziss Giop Charitable Foundation.
 

"The philosophy of this work . . . is as important to language as was I. A. Richard's [sic] to rhetoric (The Philosophy of Rhetoric, 1936). . . . [T]his volume provides a fine antidote to the glibness, political and commercial distortion, academic jargon, and general disrespect and dissipation of the language of daily experience. . . . Its claim that language teaches the 'possibility of a spiritual unity of minds' and 'opens up the interior of existence' is profound. Focusing on permanence rather than change in language, Jackson offers the psychological insight that maturity results from one's attitude to words as response to one's existence. Concrete examples clarify the thorough formulation of theoretical groundwork. . . . Strongly recommended for libraries serving students of all levels."

Find out more about Rational Meaning: A New Foundation for the Definition of Words.