James Laughlin correspondence with Vanessa Jackson and related papers

James Laughlin was born in 1914 in Pittsburgh, Pa., the great-grandson of the founder of the Jones and Laughlin Steel Corp. He was schooled at the Choate School (Wallingford, Conn.), in Switzerland, at Harvard College (Class of 1936 (39)), and spent time in Italy studying with poet Ezra Pound. Laughlin began publishing his short stories and poems while still in his teens. In 1936, while a student at Harvard, Laughlin founded New Directions which was to become the New Directions Publishing Corporation, the publisher of what has been called some of the best and most daring poetry of the 20th century. Laughlin also headed Intercultural Publications, Inc., in New York City from 1952 to 1969, and continued, throughout his life, to produce his own volumes of poetry some of which were published by New Directions. He lectured widely on publishing and gave numerous poetry readings of his own work, as well as reading and lecturing on the poetry of those whose works he published. Additionally, Laughlin was an avid skier who wrote and published on this subject; he was also owner of the Alta Ski Resort (Alta, Utah).

His poetry titles include: "Small Book of Poems" (1948), "Wild Anemone and Other Poems" (1957), "Confidential Report and Other Poems" (1959), "Tabellae" (1986), "Selected Poems, 1935-1985" (1986), "In Another Country: Poems, 1935-1975" (1978), "Owl of Minerva: Poems" (1987), "Phantoms" (1995), "The Collected Poems of James Laughlin" (1994), "Country Road: Poems" (1995), and "The Commonplace Book of Pentastichs" (1998)

Vanessa Jackson is a British painter and installation wall painter. Jackson studied at St Martins School of Art from 1971 until 1975, followed by the Royal College of Art. She was President of the New Contemporaries in 1975 and had her first solo show at the AIR Gallery in 1981. She undertook the Yaddo Residency in New York twice, 1985 and 1991. She was chair and then patron for Brazier’s International Artist’s Workshop until 2013. She won The Sunny Dupree Family Award for a Woman Artist for the RA’s Summer Exhibition 2015.

She has served as Head of Painting at Winchester School of Art for nine years, as MA and Research Tutor at the Royal College of Art for fourteen years and as a Senior Tutor at the RA Schools for fifteen years until 2013. She is presently on the Edwin Austin Abbey Council and the British School at Rome Fine Art Faculty, for which she was previously awarded the Abbey Fellowship in 1995. She is included in Painting: Documents of Contemporary Art, published by the Whitechapel and MIT. Jackson lives and works in London.