Electronic press kit for Laura Claridge

Electronic press kit for Laura Claridge
Contact
Literary Agent
Carol Mann
Carol Mann Agency
55 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10003
• Tel: 212 206-5635
• Fax: 212 675-4809
1
Personal Representation
Dennis Oppenheimer
• [email protected]
• 917 650-4575
Speaking engagements / general contact
• [email protected]
Biography
Laura Claridge has written books ranging from feminist theory to biography and popular culture, most recently the story of an American icon, Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners (Random House), for which she received a National
Endowment for the Humanities grant. This project also received the
J. Anthony Lukas Prize for a Work in Progress, administered by the
Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard and the Columbia
University Graduate School of Journalism.
Born in Clearwater, Florida, Laura Claridge received her Ph.D. in
British Romanticism and Literary Theory from the University of Maryland in 1986. She taught in the English departments at Converse and
Wofford colleges in Spartanburg, SC, and was a tenured professor of
English at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis until 1997.
She has been a frequent writer and reviewer for the national
press, appearing in such newspapers and magazines as The Wall
Street Journal, Vogue, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and
the Christian Science Monitor. Her books have been translated into
Spanish, German, and Polish. She has appeared frequently in the
national media, including NBC, CNN, BBC, CSPAN, and NPR and
such widely watched programs as the Today Show.
Laura Claridge’s biography of iconic publisher Blanche Knopf,
The Lady with the Borzoi, will be published by Farrar, Straus and
Giroux in April, 2016.
Laura Claridge and her husband live in New York’s Hudson Valley.
2
Previous works and reviews
Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners
“It is to Laura Claridge’s credit that she has written the first full biography of Post. An exhaustive researcher, Ms. Claridge has in
this book provided beguiling new details about the taxonomies that
governed Post’s life. And Ms. Claridge has situated her within the
context of the fast-changing customs at the beginning of the 20th
century when she exerted her greatest power.” Dinitia Smith, The
New York Times
“In turning her attention to Post, [Claridge] takes up two mysteries. One has to do with etiquette: why, in a supposedly classless
society like America, do so many people fret about table manners?
And the other has to do with ‘Etiquette’: how did Post convert social disgrace into such a triumph? . . . Unlike the typical author biography, which suggests that salvation comes in the form of selfexpression—shame and alienation converted into art—her life story
testifies to the redemptive power of repression. Emily Post became
Emily Post by doing what Emily Post advised.” Elizabeth Kolbert, The
New Yorker
“Laura Claridge’s meticulously researched bio hints at a feistier
Emily, who once ‘plied her banjo like a flirtatious peacock’ as a
Gilded Age debutante mingling with boldface names. . . .Emily Post
is a rich portrait of an era, but — like its subject — it has little time for
idle gossip.” Katharine Critchlow, Entertainment Weekly
“Claridge’s warm, appreciative text does full justice to the surprisingly democratic influence of Post’s most famous book, and it
also paints a rich, almost novelistic portrait of a woman whose long,
full life embodied the dramatic changes that transformed American
society.” Wendy Smith, Chicago Tribune
“Claridge’s Emily Post is not only a fascinating look at a woman
who managed to conquer many worlds in her time, it is also a social
biography of the changing face of the United States during the 20th
century.” Faye Jones, BookPage
“As with her last book, a biography of Norman Rockwell, Laura
Claridge has revisited an American icon, upending or at least ques3
tioning cliché, which, in the case of Emily Post, is that of a fussy, obsessive woman preoccupied with which fork one should use. Claridge tracks Emily’s rise from vivacious debutante to poised but neglected society wife and mother against the backdrop of the Gilded
Age, deftly tucking in such capsule anecdotes as the déclassé Vanderbilts vying for high-society acceptance. . . .Claridge’s book hints
at becoming a cultural or literary analysis, offering glimpses of Post’s
historical context and writing style.” Liz Brown, Los Angeles Times
“[Claridge] offers a rich description of the social development
of the times,. . . an immensely researched work that straddles the
line between academic and popular nonfiction. . . [R]eaders will find
themselves rewarded with fascinating insights into the times through
which Emily Post guided us.” Anne E. Carroll, Baltimore Sun
“Laura Claridge’s Emily Post is, in the end, a sterling — if you will
— contribution to the biographies of American heroines.” Nashville
Tennessean
“An absorbing new biography. . . Claridge writes a smooth, clean
story of a woman whose legacy is much more central to American
life than choosing the correct fork.” Evelyn Theiss, Cleveland Plain
Dealer
“The first to fully portray this pioneer, Claridge is becoming the
sort of biographer readers will follow anywhere, . . . and now this absorbing study of a keenly perceptive ethicist second only to Eleanor
Roosevelt in the immensity of her influence. . . .The pain and humiliation of her divorce from Edwin Post fostered her devotion to writing (she was a successful novelist) and seeded the compassion and
advocacy for women that shaped her highly moral approach to etiquette. Claridge chronicles Post’s remarkable ability to discern the
needs of a burgeoning American public transformed by immigration, industrialization, war, and women’s and civil rights, and hungry
for guidance in social and familial situations.” Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
“It was the genius of Emily Post to show us that manners are the
small coin of morality. . . .Emily Post became perhaps the most important and certainly the most influential moralist of the 20th century.
It is Laura Claridge’s genius to explain the surprising and improbable background and equally amazing personality of Emily Post.” P.J.
O’Rourke, author of Modern Manners: An Etiquette Book for Rude
4
People
“What she [Claridge] has given us is not only a canny and insightful read, but when she calls her Emily ‘a domestic anthropologist,’ you know she’s right. Brava!” Nancy Milford, author of Savage
Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay
“Laura Claridge has given us so much more than a mere biography of this august arbiter of good manners; [She] has flung open
the doors of an entire society – she has shown us in enchanting,
mesmerizing detail how the modern city of New York was built and
made.” Carolyn See, author of Making a Literary Life
“. . . a biography as rich and engaging as a portrait by John
Singer Sargent.” Daniel Mark Epstein, author of The Lincolns: Portrait
of a Marriage
“Laura Claridge’s masterful Emily Post tells the story of a lively
heroine, raised in a Gilded Age New York of silk-stockings and debutante balls, who wrote one of the enduring bestsellers of the 20th
century. . . . Laura Claridge’s vivid, graceful biography of Emily Post is
an essential contribution to American social history.” Eric Homberger,
author of Mrs. Astor’s New York
Norman Rockwell: A Life
“An excellent and thorough new biography” Michael Kimmelman,
The New York Times
“Judicious, eminently readable, and astute, persuasive. . . This
book deserves a wide readership” Michael Kammen, The Boston
Globe
"Impeccably researched and engagingly written.” The Washington Post
“Claridge has done an extraordinary job; she is an exhaustive
researcher and a gifted art historian.” Entertainment Weekly
“Fascinating” People Magazine
“A critical biography of exceptional quality. . . .carefully researched, well written, and a pleasure to read.” Christian Science
Monitor
“A fine book. . .clear and lively.” Chicago Sun-Times
“ A brilliant biography.” Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
5
Tamara de Lempicka: A Life of Deco and Decadence
"Claridge brings tact and insight to the job of unpicking the embroidery with which this aristocratic Russian émigré adorned the facts
of her life. . . .Lempicka wasn’t thoughtful, but Claridge is, and
she usefully explores the nature of modernism and women painters’
place in it." New Yorker
“Lucid and interesting account of Lempicka’s life.” New York Times
"Laura Claridge has discovered a lot more than anyone else about
this indisputably remarkable woman." Irish Times
“Even a reader with doubts (about Lempicka’s art) will be charmed
by the eccentricities described in this feminist flavored, engrossing
account.” Publishers Weekly
“The definitive round-up of de Lempicka’s ramshackle but riveting life.” Sunday Times (London)
“A thorough and intricately wrought critical biography. . . .Claridge delivers a nuanced and detailed account. . . .an astute biography.” Kirkus Reviews
Out of Bounds
"Out of Bounds disrupts and reforms our thinking about women, men,
and literature. I admire its wonderful cogency, flair, and intelligence."
Catharine R. Stimpson, Rutgers University, New Brunswick
"This impressive and varied collection passes far beyond the simple critique of ’patriarchal’ symptoms that we see so often in literary
criticism of male writers. . . .their originality resides in the collective
refusal to simply condemn or lionize the gender politics of particular writers. . . .the critics themselves struggle in earnest to revise
the terms of the debate in gender criticism." Paul Smith, CarnegieMellon University
6