Laura Claridge, who explored the lives of notable figures of the 20th century in her biographies, died at 74. Her death was announced in an email from Goldman McCormick Public Relations.
Claridge, a native of Clearwater, Florida, received her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland and went on to teach at Converse College, Wofford College, and the U.S. Naval Academy.
She published her first book, Out of Bounds: Male Writers and Gender(ed) Criticism, in 1990, and followed that up two years later with Romantic Potency: The Paradox of Desire. Her first biography, Tamara de Lempicka: A Life of Deco and Decadence, was published in 1999.
In 2001, Claridge published Norman Rockwell: A Life; in a starred review, a Kirkus critic wrote that it “makes a convincing case for Rockwell as genius and original.” Seven years later, Emily Post: Mistress of American Manners, Daughter of the Gilded Age followed. Her most recent book, The Lady With the Borzoi: Blanche Knopf, Literary Tastemaker Extraordinaire, was published in 2016.
“Laura spent much of her life trying to understand other people in all their complexity,” Goldman McCormick wrote in an obituary shared with Kirkus. “She believed that lives deserved to be looked at closely and honestly, without being reduced to a simple story. That belief shaped her work and became one of her greatest contributions as a biographer.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
