The ABCs of Reading (Laura) Riding: Modernism for Children

Abstract: Scholars of children’s literature emphasize the linguistic dimensions of child development— language acquisition, literacy, and schooling—as these processes profoundly affect meaning-making, thinking, and communications. American modernist Laura Riding (1901–1991), best known as a vanguard poet and literary critic, engaged extensively in literacy and lexicology projects across the 1930s, revealing a growing preoccupation with early education, especially for girls. Her singular pedagogical approaches bridge Rousseauian romanticism and modernist resistance. Riding interrogates childhood learning with continual return to literacy’s principal means of dissemination: the dictionary. This essay adds new perspectives through an analysis of Riding’s understudied critique of early twentieth-century scholastic practices that undermine the intellectual and social independence of girls in their entry into knowledge. Through simplified and cautionary instruction, Riding labors to assert clarity and equity for an increasingly discordant new century.