Evans, Walker and Wright Morris. New Directions in Prose & Poetry, 1940. (Author copy)

New Directions, 1940, Edited by James Laughlin. Includes preview excerpts of James Agee & Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men with four illustrations by Evans, and Wright Morris, The Inhabitants, with 15 photos.  Other contributions by Paul Goodman, Weldon Kees, Alfred Young Fisher, Katherine Anne Porter, George Orwell, Parker Tyler, Edgar Kaufmann Jr., Frank Lloyd Wright (with illustrations of Taliesin West), John Peale Bishop,  et al. Also a large section on Surrealism with contributions by Surrealist artists and writers, such as Louis Aragon, Hans Arp, Andre Breton, Nicholas Calas, Paul Magritte, Pablo PIcasso, Tristan Tzara, and many others. 579 pages.  This copy belonged to one of the authors, Edgar Kaufmann Jr. (1910–1989), American architect, lecturer, and author, with his card laid in and his revisions in pencil to his essay. “The New Design and Public Acceptance.”  (Kauffman's parents lived in the Frank Lloyd Wright designed house, Falling Water.) Very good in hardcover, beige cloth, spine darkened. Custom made 4-mil polyester jacket.  Summary:

New Directions in Prose & Poetry, 1940, edited by James Laughlin, is the fifth annual volume of the seminal avant-garde anthology series. Published during the early uncertainty of World War II, this edition is historically significant for acting as a "launchpad" for some of the most influential works of 20th-century American documentary and literature, specifically highlighting the intersection of the written word and the photographic image.

Core Themes and Literary Context

• The "Documentary" Turn: While earlier volumes focused heavily on European Surrealism and experimental verse, the 1940 edition reflects a shift toward "Social Realism" and the American landscape. It explores how art can bear witness to the hardships of the Great Depression and the rural poor.

• The Fusion of Media: A primary focus of this volume is the "Photo-Text" experiment. Laughlin curated sections that argued photography was not merely an illustration of prose, but a parallel narrative force.

Major Previews and Features

• "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" (Agee & Evans): This volume provided one of the first significant public "previews" of what would become a masterpiece of 20th-century photojournalism. It features Walker Evans’ stark, unblinking portraits of Alabama sharecroppers paired with James Agee’s lyrical, exhaustive prose. The preview established the book’s controversial "non-collaborative" structure, where images and text stand as independent, equal parts.

• "The Inhabitants" (Wright Morris): The anthology introduced the work of Wright Morris, who pioneered the "Photo-Text" novel. Unlike Evans, Morris took his own photographs of "sacramental" objects—empty chairs, weathered barns, and lonely interiors—to evoke the presence of people who were no longer in the frame.

• Broad Avant-Garde Scope: Beyond these previews, the volume includes experimental work by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (writing as Lawrence Ferling), Katherine Anne Porter, and Surrealist poetry, maintaining the series' reputation for pushing formal boundaries.