Four Unposted Letters to Catherine

by Laura Riding, Laura (Riding) Jackson

Like Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, this remarkable little book of wisdom and advice refreshes the mind and renews the spirit. Written in 1930 and published in Paris by the Hours Press in a limited edition of only two hundred, these letters were addressed to an eight-year-old girl, the "thoughtful and sensible" child of Nancy Nicholson and Robert Graves. But they were also meant for adults who might have such a child in their spirit. In simple, luminous language, Laura Riding explains the difference between learning and knowing; the value of thinking, of doing, and of not-showing-off; and how it is good to live straight, avoiding the hypocrisies and pretensions of "the muddle." Here is a literary treasure to be shared between generations. For many readers, it will also serve as an invaluable key to the thought of this astonishingly original writer.

Genres: Essays

79 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1930

About the author

Laura (Riding) Jackson was an American poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer.

1923-1926 as Laura Riding Gottschalk
1927-1939 as Laura Riding
1963-1991 as Laura (Riding) Jackson

She also published under the pseudonym Madeleine Vara.

Reviews

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

People are by themselves in being themselves, but together with everyone and everything else in being everything. And this is what makes a world, and people in it. Things that don’t think about themselves aren’t people; they are just everything. And by themselves they are nothing. And even all together, as everything, they are nothing because they know nothing about everything. We are something because we think about ourselves. And being part of everything we think about everything too and make something of it


If a person knows everything about herself, then she is herself, which is a part of everything. But if she can think further than this, then she can perhaps make that part into a whole, into everything — not just an everything that is everything and anything, but an everything that is herself, or, you might say, an everything that is precious instead of just ordinary. This good thing, this little everything — well, it might be a poem or anything that a thinking might be



*

[Sean Ballard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Transformational. Beautiful. True. Pure.

[Heidi Belinsky · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow. These letters are so difficult to read. I am sure the thoughts are well thought out, but the words contradict themselves. Also, the vocabulary is so repetitive that it hard to keep one's place while reading the paragraph. "And even if a grown-up does know everything about everything, the important thing is to know everything about oneself, because that is where knowing everything about everything must begin."

[Liz Anne Flo · Rating 1 out of 5]

I liked the thoughts she shared in her letters, but felt they were not well written. In their attempt to be philosophical, they became muddled.