A Description of Acquaintance - (Recencies Series: Research and Recovery in Twentieth-Century) by Logan Esdale & Jane Malcolm (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"The Riding-Stein correspondence will be compelling reading for all who are interested in modernism."--Bob Perelman, author of The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing and Literary History

"This three-year correspondence sheds a brilliant new light on what is arguably one of the most intensely productive periods in both Riding's and Stein's careers."--Jennifer Ashton, editor of The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry since 1945