New Directions Publishing - New Directions History

New Directions History

New Directions was born in 1936 of Ezra Pound's advice to the young James Laughlin, then a Harvard University sophomore, to "do something' useful" after finishing his studies at Harvard. Laughlin's response was to found a press committed to publishing experimental writing. Initially, this ambition to act as a venue for innovative work manifested itself in roughly annual anthologies of new writing, each titled "New Directions in Poetry and Prose" (with either a year or a volume number after it, e.g., "New Directions in Poetry and Prose 1941" or "New Directions in Poetry and Prose 11"). Writers whose early work was published in these anthologies include Dylan Thomas, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Thomas Merton, Denise Levertov, James Agee, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The New Directions "annuals," soon broadened their focus to include quality contemporary writing of all genres, though the work included tended to represent a more intellectual side of American writing as well as a considerable amount of literature in translation from modernist authors around the world. New Directions also published many now-famous writers, including Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, when they had a hard time finding homes for their work, and Tennessee Williams was published as a poet for the very first time in a New Directions poetry collection.

James Laughlin also initiated the publication of a number of thematic "series," in some cases offering subscriptions to the series in a manner similar to that of magazine publishers. The New Directions "Poet of the Month" series consisted of thin volumes of either lengthy individual poems or small collections of poems by one author were released on a monthly basis, and a larger "Poet of the Year" volume was issued once annually. Each volume was published by a different small press and released by New Directions. The Series was discontinued after a few years.

The publication "Directions" began in 1941 as a quarterly soft-bound journal, with each edition dedicated to a single author or work in prose. Early issues included a collection of short stories by Vladimir Nabokov and a play by William Carlos Williams. The subscription model did not take hold, and later editions in the series were published in more traditional form and sold as individual works, not just to subscribers. Another short-lived New Directions periodical, Pharos, was discontinued after its fourth number was published in the winter of 1947.

Other notable undertakings include the "New Classics" and "Modern Readers" series, which reissued recent books that had gone out of print but that New Directions believed deserved to become classics. These reprints included such works as Exiles and Stephen Hero by James Joyce and, most famously, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The New Classics series became, along with the Annuals, one of the signature series of New Directions and helped to build the reputation of a number of works that are now considered "classics." The "Makers of Modern Literature" series published criticism and literary histories of major figures in or influences on modern literature.

In 1977, New Directions was presented with a Carey Thomas Award special citation for distinguished publishing in experimental literature. New Directions' authors have won numerous national and international awards, including the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (Octavio Paz, Kamau Brathwaite), and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.