The Laura (Riding) Jackson Home in Vero Beach, Florida

Laura (Riding) Jackson was a poet, critic and student of language who spent the last half of her life in a small frame house in Wabasso, north of Vero Beach.

The Florida Department of State historical marker placed at the house in 2020 records that she was born Laura Reichenthal in New York City in 1901, studied at Cornell University and, writing as Laura Riding, became a renowned author during the 1920s and 1930s. Her home is now preserved on the Mueller Campus of Indian River State College at 6155 College Lane, Vero Beach.

Her literary career began far from Indian River County. The Laura (Riding) Jackson Foundation describes her as the only female member of the southern literary group known as the Fugitives, whose members included Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate and John Crowe Ransom. She moved to Europe to work with the English poet Robert Graves, and the two founded the Seizin Press in London in 1927 before settling in Deia, on Mallorca. The marker credits her with 27 books of poetry, short stories, criticism and social commentary produced abroad.

The Foundation's list of major works runs from The Close Chaplet (Hogarth Press, 1926) and A Survey of Modernist Poetry, written with Graves, through Collected Poems (1938) and the late prose book The Telling (1972). Several were reissued long after she settled in Wabasso; the same list gives The Close Chaplet a new edition through Ugly Duckling Press in 2020.

Last verified: October 15, 2026, by re-reading the state marker for the Jackson homeplace, the Foundation's biography, historic home, garden, grave site, major works and Poetry and Barbeque pages, and an archived Indian River State College news release on the 2019 move.

She returned to the United States in 1939, gave up poetry for a comprehensive study of language and in 1943 settled in Wabasso, according to the state marker.

In 1941 she married Schuyler Jackson, the Time magazine poetry critic, who joined that work. The marker says the couple settled in Wabasso in 1943 and restored a small frame home that stood on an 11-acre citrus grove; the Foundation describes the property as 13 acres of citrus groves.

The Wabasso grove paid the bills. The Foundation says the Jacksons raised citrus organically and shipped it to Northern markets to support work on an unprecedented dictionary in which each word would have only one definition, a project that grew into a study of the nature and function of language. Schuyler Jackson died in 1968. Laura completed the project before her death on September 2, 1991, and Rational Meaning: A New Foundation for the Definition of Words was published in 1997 by University Press of Virginia.

Life in the Wabasso house stayed spare. The Foundation's historic home page notes that until 1989 she lived there without electricity, using kerosene for heat and light and propane for cooking. Laura and Schuyler Jackson are buried at Winter Beach Cemetery, entered from 69th Street; the Foundation's grave site page notes that the cemetery is privately owned and asks that visits be scheduled with its management.

The state marker calls the Jacksons' Wabasso home an excellent example of Florida cracker architecture.

Built of Florida pine circa 1910, it has raised floors, a metal roof, deep porches and large windows set for cross-ventilation, features meant to keep a house livable in the Wabasso heat before air conditioning. The Foundation adds that the center portion, also of Florida pine, is the oldest part of the house and is distinctive in its simplicity, and that the Jacksons added the north bedroom and bathroom and installed indoor plumbing.

The Foundation says the home is registered as a Friends of the Library USA National Literary Landmark and listed on the Florida Literary Map. A pole barn moved with the house in 2019 stands beside it on the Mueller Campus, with picnic tables that visitors may use unless a group has reserved the barn for a meeting or event.

The house has moved twice, from Wabasso to the Environmental Learning Center in 1994 and to the Mueller Campus in Vero Beach in 2019.

After her death in 1991, a group of concerned individuals created the nonprofit Laura (Riding) Jackson Home Preservation Foundation to save it, and on August 9, 1994 the house was moved to the Environmental Learning Center, according to the Foundation's historic home page. The second move came on Sunday, July 14, 2019, when the pole barn frame, the main section of the house and the roof reached the Indian River State College Mueller Campus in Vero Beach, as an Indian River State College news release dated July 29, 2019 reported.

The college set the house on approximately one acre between the Brackett Library and the Schumann Center, on what the release called the western end of the Mueller Campus. It listed paved parking, nearby restrooms, landscaping, lighting, security and meeting space for workshops and events among the gains of the new site, and noted that GoLine buses serve the campus regularly. The release describes the 141-acre Mueller Campus at 6155 College Lane as the first Indian River State College branch campus, established in 1976, and its provost spoke of linking the house to college classes in literature, literacy, environment, history and education.

The state marker placed at the house in 2020 records that the Laura (Riding) Jackson Foundation moved it to this site in 2019 to serve as a focal point for the study of literature, history, architecture and the environment, the same purpose the preservation group named when it formed after her death in Wabasso.

The house on the Mueller Campus in Vero Beach is open for tours from November through April and closed May through October.

For the 2026-2027 season the Foundation lists hours from 1 to 4 p.m. on the second Sunday of each month from Nov. 8, 2026 through Apr. 11, 2027, and every Tuesday from Nov. 10, 2026. The Foundation's biography page prints the Tuesday end date as Apr. 27, 2026, and its site footer still shows the 2025-2026 dates, so the season dates are worth confirming by phone at 772-569-6718. A $5 per person donation is suggested, groups of eight or fewer can drop in, and larger groups reserve tours in advance. The grounds on College Lane are open from sunrise to sundown, and signs with QR codes explain the house when it is closed.

Behind the house is a Florida-friendly garden with pine flats, a children's sensory garden, a word garden and a resident gopher tortoise, and a path links it to the Brackett Library on the Mueller Campus. The Foundation's Writing Center, its office for workshops and writing groups, is at 1914 14th Avenue in downtown Vero Beach, according to its home page.

The Foundation calls itself the literary heart of Indian River County since 1992.

Its stated mission is to preserve the author's home, now on the Mueller Campus, and to nurture writers of all ages through writers groups, summer camps, workshops and poetry festivals. Its programs pages list teen writing workshops, the Write in the Middle summer camp, Teens Listen, Kids Write Outside for ages 3 to 11 and adult writing groups such as Night Writers, Porch Poets and Poets Corner, and its home page lists the LRJF Book Fest on November 7.

The Foundation's Poetry and Barbeque page calls the event one of its most popular each season. The 16th annual Poetry and Barbeque is set for Saturday, April 3, 2027, at a new venue, the Heritage Center, and past featured poets include Naomi Shihab Nye, Tony Hoagland, Peter Meinke, Campbell McGrath and Sean Sexton.