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Robert J. Jones (essay date 1992)

SOURCE: “Introduction,” in In Praise of Common Things: Lizette Woodworth Reese Revisited, edited by Robert J. Jones, Greenwood Press, 1992, pp. 1-18.

[In the following essay, Jones provides an overview of Reese's life and career.]

In 1921, Lizette Woodworth Reese sent to the Saturday Review of Literature, along with Spicewood her small volume of poems, a short note. In it she wrote, “I am small, fair, grey, and good-humored. Also quick tempered. I love Life, and Beauty, and People.”¹ It was a succinct summary of her personality, but did little to indicate her powers of observation and recall, her sensitivity, or the exquisite simplicity of her writing.

She published, in a life of 80 years, ten slim books of poetry, a short book of selected poems, stories and poems in various periodicals, two books of prose reminiscences, and a fragment of a novel. The revolution in...

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1. Introduction
2. Criticism
   1. The Nation (review date 1896)
   2. Mark Van Doren (review date 1921)
   3. Louis Untermeyer (essay date 1923)
   4. Harriet Monroe (review date 1924)
   5. David Morton (review date 1924)
   6. Genevieve Taggard (review date 1926)
   7. Padraic Colum (review date 1926)
   8. Lawrence S. Morris (review date 1926)
   9. Virginia R. McCormick (review date 1926)
   10. William Rose Benet (review date 1927)
   11. Jean Starr Untermeyer (review date 1930)
   12. Eda Lou Walton (review date 1933)
   13. Louise Bogan (review date 1936)
   14. American Literature (review date 1937)
   15. Carlin T. Kindilien (essay date 1957)
   16. Robert J. Jones (essay date 1992)
   17. Robert J. Jones (essay date 1992)
3. Further Reading
4. Copyright

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