Draft Letter from Laura (Riding) Jackson to The Editor of The Times Literary Supplement, 1976-01

"I have been moved by Miss Ruth Padel's review, in your issue of December 26, 1975 of Robert Graves' Collected Poems 1975 to offer as ballas for the balloon-like still-higher lift that Miss Padel endeavors to give what to calling 'Graves criticism' with her particular formula of super-heated veneration, two related articles of critical principle. The first goes: for criticism, there must be knowledge of the nature of a work to a degree of intimateness with its make-up productive of reliable judgements."

....

"Now, for my second article of critical principles. Where a subject is obscured from an ignorant but honest critic by policies of subjective complaisance compromising personal sources of knowledge of it, and general literary treatment of it is affected by what might be called objective policies of complaisance., what should he, she, do?"