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New Directions Publishing Corp. is an independent book publishing company that was founded in 1936 by James Laughlin and incorporated in 1964. Its offices are located at 80 Eighth Avenue in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
.


History

New Directions was born in 1936 of
Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...
's advice to the young James Laughlin, then a Harvard University sophomore, to "do something useful" after finishing his studies at Harvard. The first projects to come out of New Directions were anthologies of new writing, each titled ''New Directions in Poetry and Prose'' (until 1966's ''NDPP 19''). Early writers incorporated in these anthologies include
Dylan Thomas Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems " Do not go gentle into that good night" and " And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" ''Und ...
,
Marianne Moore Marianne Craig Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was an American modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit. Early life Moore was born in Kirkwood ...
,
Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance compa ...
,
Thomas Merton Thomas Merton (January 31, 1915 – December 10, 1968) was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion. On May 26, 1949, he was ordained to the Catholic priesthood and g ...
, Denise Levertov,
James Agee James Rufus Agee ( ; November 27, 1909 – May 16, 1955) was an American novelist, journalist, poet, screenwriter and film critic. In the 1940s, writing for ''Time Magazine'', he was one of the most influential film critics in the United States. ...
, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. New Directions later broadened their focus to include writing of all genres, representing not only American writing, but also a considerable amount of literature in translation from modernist authors around the world. New Directions also published the early work of many writers including
Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...
and
William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet, writer, and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. In addition to his writing, Williams had a long career as a physician practicing both pedia ...
, and
Tennessee Williams Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the thr ...
was published as a poet for the very first time in a New Directions poetry collection. Laughlin also initiated a number of thematic series and publications. 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 to subscribers, and a larger "Poet of the Year" volume was issued once annually. The series were discontinued after a few years. "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 to the general public. 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. These reprints included such works as ''
Exiles Exile is primarily penal expulsion from one's native country, and secondarily expatriation or prolonged absence from one's homeland under either the compulsion of circumstance or the rigors of some high purpose. Usually persons and peoples suf ...
'' and '' Stephen Hero'' by
James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the Modernism, modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important ...
and ''
The Great Gatsby ''The Great Gatsby'' is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby ...
'' by F. Scott Fitzgerald. After Laughlin's death, New Directions Publishing became owned by a trust established in his will.


Jacket design and colophon

After the time of World War II, New Directions developed a close relationship with the artist Alvin Lustig, who designed modernist abstract book jackets. Lustig was ultimately responsible for developing a distinctive style of dust jacket that served as a New Directions hallmark for many years. The company's colophon is a figure of a centaur based upon a sculpture by Heinz Henghes, and usually appears on the spine of New Directions books.


Presidents

* James Laughlin * Griselda Ohannessian * Peggy Fox * Barbara Epler


Awards

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 Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

* Tomas Tranströmer, 2011 * Octavio Paz, 1990 * Camilo José Cela, 1989 * Elias Canetti, 1981 * Eugenio Montale, 1975 * Pablo Neruda, 1971 * Yasunari Kawabata, 1968 * Jean-Paul Sartre, 1964 * Saint-John Perse, 1960 * Boris Pasternak, 1958 * Andre Gide, 1947 * Hermann Hesse, 1946 * Frédéric Mistral, 1904


Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made ...

* Hilton Als, 2017 * Gary Snyder, 1975 * George Oppen, 1969 * Richard Eberhart, 1966 * William Carlos Williams, 1963 * Tennessee Williams, 1948, 1955 * Robert Penn Warren, 1947, 1958, 1979


National Book Award The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The Nat ...

* Yoko Tawada, 2018 * Nathaniel Mackey, 2006


MacArthur Foundation Fellowship

* John Keene, 2018 * Peter Cole, 2007 * Lydia Davis, 2003 * Anne Carson, 2000 * Guy Davenport, 1990 * Allen Grossman, 1989 * Walter Abish, 1987


PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction

* Toby Olson, 1983


Prix Goncourt The Prix Goncourt (french: Le prix Goncourt, , ''The Goncourt Prize'') is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year". The prize carries a symbolic reward o ...

* Mathias Énard, 2015 * Eugène Guillevic, 1988 * Emile Ajar, 1975 * Romain Gary, 1956


Man Booker International Prize The International Booker Prize (formerly known as the Man Booker International Prize) is an international literary award hosted in the United Kingdom. The introduction of the International Prize to complement the Man Booker Prize was announced ...

* Laszlo Krasznahorkai / George Szirtes and Ottilie Mulzet, 2015


Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

* Jenny Erpenbeck / Susan Bernofsky, 2015


Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize The Academy of American Poets is a national, member-supported organization that promotes poets and the art of poetry. The nonprofit organization was incorporated in the state of New York in 1934. It fosters the readership of poetry through outreac ...

* Denise Levertov, 1976


Bollingen Prize in American Poetry

* Nathaniel Mackey, 2015 * Susan Howe, 2011 * Allen Grossman, 2009 * Robert Creeley, 1999 * Gary Snyder, 1997 * Robert Penn Warren, 1967 * Robert Fitzgerald, 1961 * Delmore Schwartz, 1960 * Ezra Pound, 1948


Robert Frost Medal The Poetry Society of America is a literary organization founded in 1910 by poets, editors, and artists. It is the oldest poetry organization in the United States. Past members of the society have included such renowned poets as Witter Bynner, Ro ...

* Susan Howe, 2017 * Kamau Brathwaite, 2015 * Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 2003 * Denise Levertov, 1999 * James Laughlin, 1999 * Robert Creeley, 1987


Windham-Campbell Literature Prize

* John Keene, 2018 * Hilton Als, 2016


Vilenica Kristal Prize

* Luljeta Lleshanaku, 2009


Current projects

The current focus of New Directions is threefold: discovering and introducing to the US contemporary international writers; publishing new and experimental American poetry and prose; and reissuing New Directions' classic titles in new editions. Drawing from the tradition of the early anthologies and series, New Directions launched the Pearl series, which presents short works by New Directions writers in slim, minimalist volumes designed by
Rodrigo Corral Rodrigo Corral is a graphic designer and conceptual artist based in New York City. In 2002, Corral founded Rodrigo Corral Design studio to create iconic book jacket art for the publishing industry. Corral has created designs and conceptual art f ...
. Recent additions to the series include '' On Booze'' by F. Scott Fitzgerald and '' The Leviathan'' by Joseph Roth. /sup> New Directions also publishes a selection of academic reading guides to accompany a number of their books, including
Hermann Hesse Hermann Karl Hesse (; 2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include '' Demian'', '' Steppenwolf'', '' Siddhartha'', and '' The Glass Bead Game'', each of which explores an individual ...
's ''Siddhartha'' and ''
The Night of the Iguana ''The Night of the Iguana'' is a stage play written by American author Tennessee Williams. It is based on his 1948 short story. In 1959, Williams staged it as a one-act play, and over the next two years he developed it into a full-length play, p ...
'' by Tennessee Williams. /sup>


Authors

New Directions was the first American publisher of such notables as Vladimir Nabokov,
Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known b ...
, and
Henry Miller Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American novelist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi- autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical re ...
. Today, their authors include: American literature * Walter Abish * Will Alexander *
John Allman John Morgan Allman is an American neuroscientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, active in the fields of primates, cognition and evolutionary neuroscience. Life He graduated from University of Chicago with a P ...
*
Sherwood Anderson Sherwood Anderson (September 13, 1876 – March 8, 1941) was an American novelist and short story writer, known for subjective and self-revealing works. Self-educated, he rose to become a successful copywriter and business owner in Cleveland and ...
* Wayne Andrews * David Antin *
Paul Auster Paul Benjamin Auster (born February 3, 1947) is an American writer and film director. His notable works include ''The New York Trilogy'' (1987), '' Moon Palace'' (1989), ''The Music of Chance'' (1990), '' The Book of Illusions'' (2002), '' The B ...
* Jimmy Santiago Baca *
Djuna Barnes Djuna Barnes (, June 12, 1892 – June 18, 1982) was an American artist, illustrator, journalist, and writer who is perhaps best known for her novel ''Nightwood'' (1936), a cult classic of lesbian fiction and an important work of modernist litera ...
* Lee Bartlett * Kay Boyle * William Bronk * Frederick Busch * Hayden Carruth * Tom Clark *
Peter Cole Peter Cole is a MacArthur-winning poet and translator who lives in Jerusalem and New Haven. Cole was born in 1957 in Paterson, New Jersey. He attended Williams College and Hampshire College, and moved to Jerusalem in 1981. He has been called "o ...
*
Cid Corman Cid (Sidney) Corman (June 29, 1924 – March 12, 2004) was an American poet, translator and editor, most notably of ''Origin'', who was a key figure in the history of American poetry in the second half of the 20th century. Life Corman was bor ...
* Gregory Corso *
Robert Creeley Robert White Creeley (May 21, 1926 – March 30, 2005) was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school. He was close with Char ...
* Guy Davenport *
Edward Dahlberg Edward Dahlberg (July 22, 1900 – February 27, 1977) was an American novelist, essayist, and autobiographer. Background Edward Dahlberg was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Elizabeth Dahlberg. Together, mother and son led a vagabond existence ...
* Helen DeWitt *
Debra Di Blasi Debra Di Blasi (born 1957) is an American author, screenwriter and former publisher. Biography Debra Di Blasi was born May 27, 1957, in Kirksville, Missouri. She grew up in northern Missouri. She was the art columnist for '' The Pitch'' maga ...
* H.D. * Coleman Dowell * Robert Duncan *
Richard Eberhart Richard Ghormley Eberhart (April 5, 1904 – June 9, 2005) was an American poet who published more than a dozen books of poetry and approximately twenty works in total. "Richard Eberhart emerged out of the 1930s as a modern stylist with romant ...
* William Everson * Lawrence Ferlinghetti * Thalia Field * F. Scott Fitzgerald * Robert Fitzgerald * Forrest Gander * John Gardner *
Allen Grossman Allen R. Grossman (January 7, 1932 – June 27, 2014) was a noted American poet, critic and professor. Biography Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1932,Bruce Weber (June 29, 2014)Allen Grossman, A Poet's Poet, and Scholar, dies at 82 The New ...
* John Hawkes * David Hinton * Susan Howe *
Henry James Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...
* Robinson Jeffers * Mary Karr *
Bob Kaufman Robert Garnell Kaufman (April 18, 1925 – January 12, 1986) was an American Beat poet and surrealist as well as a jazz performance artist and satirist. In France, where his poetry had a large following, he was known as the "black American ...
* Alvin Levin * Denise Levertov * Nathaniel Mackey * Bernadette Mayer *
Carole Maso Carole Maso is a contemporary American novelist and essayist, known for her experimental, poetic and fragmentary narratives which are often called postmodern. She is a recipient of a 1993 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. Biography Maso was bor ...
* Michael McClure *
Thomas Merton Thomas Merton (January 31, 1915 – December 10, 1968) was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion. On May 26, 1949, he was ordained to the Catholic priesthood and g ...
*
Joyce Carol Oates Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16, 1938) is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. Her novels '' Bla ...
* Charles Olson * Toby Olson *
George Oppen George Oppen (April 24, 1908 – July 7, 1984) was an American poet, best known as one of the members of the Objectivist group of poets. He abandoned poetry in the 1930s for political activism and moved to Mexico in 1950 to avoid the attentions ...
* Michael Palmer * Kenneth Patchen *
Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...
''The Pisan Cantos'', New York, New Directions, 194

- 200

/ref> *
Kenneth Rexroth Kenneth Charles Marion Rexroth (1905–1982) was an American poet, translator, and critical essayist. He is regarded as a central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, and paved the groundwork for the movement. Although he did not consider ...
*
William Saroyan William Saroyan (; August 31, 1908 – May 18, 1981) was an Armenian-American novelist, playwright, and short story writer. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1940, and in 1943 won the Academy Award for Best Story for the film ''T ...
* Delmore Schwartz *
Frederic Tuten Frederic Tuten (born December 2, 1936) is an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. He has written five novels – ''The Adventures of Mao on the Long March'' (1971), ''Tallien: A Brief Romance'' (1988), ''Tintin in the New World: A ...
* Rosmarie Waldrop *
Robert Penn Warren Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905 – September 15, 1989) was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the lit ...
* Eliot Weinberger * Nathanael West *
Tennessee Williams Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the thr ...
*
William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet, writer, and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. In addition to his writing, Williams had a long career as a physician practicing both pedia ...
* Louis Zukofsky Central American, South American, and Caribbean literature * César Aira (Argentina) * Martín Adán (Peru) *
Homero Aridjis Homero Aridjis (born April 6, 1940) is a Mexican poet, novelist, environmental activist, journalist and diplomat known for his rich imagination, poetry of lyrical beauty, and ethical independence. Family and early life Aridjis was born in Contep ...
(Mexico) *
Roberto Bolaño Roberto Bolaño Ávalos (; 28 April 1953 – 15 July 2003) was a Chilean novelist, short-story writer, poet and essayist. In 1999, Bolaño won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize for his novel ''Los detectives salvajes'' (''The Savage Detectives'' ...
(Chile) *
Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known b ...
(Argentina) *
Kamau Brathwaite The Honourable Edward Kamau Brathwaite, CHB (; 11 May 1930 – 4 February 2020), was a Barbadian poet and academic, widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon.Staff (2011)"Kamau Brathwaite." New York University, D ...
(Caribbean) * Coral Bracho (México) * Ernesto Cardenal (Nicaragua) * Adolfo Bioy Casares (Argentina) *
Horacio Castellanos Moya Horacio Castellanos Moya (born 1957) is a El Salvador, Salvadoran novelist, short story writer, and journalist. Life and work Castellanos Moya was born in 1957 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras to a Honduran mother and a Salvadoran father. His family moved ...
(El Salvador) *
Julio Cortázar Julio Florencio Cortázar (26 August 1914 – 12 February 1984; ) was an Argentine, nationalized French novelist, short story writer, essayist, and translator. Known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, Cortázar influenced an ...
(Argentina) * Felisberto Hernández (Uruguay) * Vicente Huidobro (Chile) *
Enrique Lihn Enrique Lihn Carrasco (3 September 1929 – 10 July 1988) was a Chilean poet, playwright, and novelist. The son of Enrique Lihn Doll and María Carrasco Délano, he married Ivette Mingram (1932–2008). They had one daughter, the actress Andre ...
(Chile) *
Clarice Lispector Clarice Lispector (born Chaya Pinkhasivna Lispector ( uk, Хая Пінкасівна Ліспектор); December 10, 1920December 9, 1977) was a Ukrainian-born Brazilian novelist and short story writer. Her innovative, idiosyncratic works ex ...
(Brazil) *
Pablo Neruda Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973), better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda (; ), was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Nerud ...
(Chile) * Nicanor Parra (Chile) *
Octavio Paz Octavio Paz Lozano (March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998) was a Mexican poet and diplomat. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1977 Jerusalem Prize, the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and ...
(Mexico) * René Philoctète (Haiti) * Rodrigo Rey Rosa (Guatemala) * Guillermo Rosales (Cuba) * Evelio Rosero (Colombia) *
Luis Fernando Verissimo Luís Fernando Verissimo (born September 26, 1936) is a Brazilian writer. Verissimo is the son of Brazilian writer Erico Verissimo and lived with his father in the United States during his childhood. Best known for his '' crônicas'' and texts ...
(Brazil) British, Irish, Canadian, and Australian literature *
Valentine Ackland Valentine Ackland (born Mary Kathleen Macrory Ackland; 20 May 1906 – 9 November 1969) was an English poet, and life partner of novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner. Their relationship was strained by Ackland’s infidelities and alcoholism, but su ...
*
H. E. Bates Herbert Ernest Bates (16 May 1905 – 29 January 1974), better known as H. E. Bates, was an English writer. His best-known works include ''Love for Lydia'', '' The Darling Buds of May'', and ''My Uncle Silas''. Early life H.E. Bates was ...
*
Martin Bax Martin Bax is a British consultant paediatrician, who, in addition to his medical career, founded the Arts magazine '' Ambit'' in 1959. He lives in London. Since he created it, ''Ambit'' has published poetry, prose and artwork from the likes of Fl ...
*
Carmel Bird Carmel Bird (born 1940) is an Australian writer of novels, short stories and essays. She has written books on the art of writing, and has edited anthologies of essays and stories. In 2016, she was awarded the Patrick White Literary Award. Writing ...
*
Sir Thomas Browne Sir Thomas Browne (; 19 October 1605 – 19 October 1682) was an English polymath and author of varied works which reveal his wide learning in diverse fields including science and medicine, religion and the esoteric. His writings display a ...
* Edwin Brock * Christine Brooke-Rose * Basil Bunting *
Elias Canetti Elias Canetti (; bg, Елиас Канети; 25 July 1905 – 14 August 1994) was a German-language writer, born in Ruse, Bulgaria to a Sephardic family. They moved to Manchester, England, but his father died in 1912, and his mother took her ...
* Anne Carson * Joyce Cary * Douglas Cleverdon * Maurice Collis * William Empson *
Caradoc Evans David Caradoc Evans (31 December 1878 – 11 January 1945), was a Welsh story writer, novelist and playwright. Biography Evans was brought up in a Welsh language, Welsh-speaking community in Rhydlewis, Ceredigion, Cardiganshire, and although he ...
* Gavin Ewart *
Ronald Firbank Arthur Annesley Ronald Firbank (17 January 1886 – 21 May 1926) was an innovative English novelist. His eight short novels, partly inspired by the London aesthetes of the 1890s, especially Oscar Wilde, consist largely of dialogue, with referen ...
* Henry Green *
Christopher Isherwood Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood (26 August 1904 – 4 January 1986) was an Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist. His best-known works include ''Goodbye to Berlin'' (1939), a semi-autobiographical ...
*
James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the Modernism, modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important ...
*
B. S. Johnson Bryan Stanley William Johnson (5 February 1933 – 13 November 1973) was an English experimental novelist, poet and literary critic. He also produced television programmes and made films. Early life Johnson was born into a working-class family, ...
*
D. H. Lawrence David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English writer, novelist, poet and essayist. His works reflect on modernity, industrialization, sexuality, emotional health, vitality, spontaneity and instinct. His best-k ...
* Hugh MacDiarmid *
Wilfred Owen Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918) was an English poet and soldier. He was one of the leading poets of the First World War. His war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was much influenced b ...
* Caradog Prichard *
Herbert Read Sir Herbert Edward Read, (; 4 December 1893 – 12 June 1968) was an English art historian, poet, literary critic and philosopher, best known for numerous books on art, which included influential volumes on the role of art in education. Read ...
*
Peter Dale Scott Peter Dale Scott (born 11 January 1929) is a Canadian-born poet, academic, and former diplomat. A son of the Canadian poet and constitutional lawyer F. R. Scott and painter Marian Dale Scott, he is best known for his critiques of deep politics ...
* C. H. Sisson * Stevie Smith * Muriel Spark *
Dylan Thomas Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems " Do not go gentle into that good night" and " And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" ''Und ...
* Charles Tomlinson European literature * Germano Almeida (Cape Verde) * Corrado Alvaro (Italy) *
Alfred Andersch Alfred Hellmuth Andersch (; 4 February 1914 – 21 February 1980) was a German writer, publisher, and radio editor. The son of a conservative East Prussian army officer, he was born in Munich, Germany and died in Berzona, Ticino, Switzerland. M ...
(Germany) * Guillaume Apollinaire (France) * Gennadiy Aygi (Russia) * Honoré de Balzac (France) *
Jacques Barzun Jacques Martin Barzun (; November 30, 1907 – October 25, 2012) was a French-American historian known for his studies of the history of ideas and cultural history. He wrote about a wide range of subjects, including baseball, mystery novels, and ...
(France) *
Charles Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticism inherited fr ...
(France) * Gottfried Benn (Germany) * Nina Berberova (Russia) * Giuseppe Berto (Italy) * Johannes Bobrowski (Germany) *
Wolfgang Borchert Wolfgang Borchert (; 20 May 1921 – 20 November 1947) was a German author and playwright whose work was strongly influenced by his experience of dictatorship and his service in the '' Wehrmacht'' during the Second World War. His work is among ...
(Germany) *
Johan Borgen Johan Collett Müller Borgen (28 April 1902 – 16 October 1979) was a Norwegian writer, journalist and critic. His best-known work is the novel ''Lillelord'' for which he was awarded the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature in 1955. He was ...
(Norway) * Alain Bosquet (France) *
Mikhail Bulgakov Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov ( rus, links=no, Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков, p=mʲɪxɐˈil ɐfɐˈnasʲjɪvʲɪtɕ bʊlˈɡakəf; – 10 March 1940) was a Soviet writer, medical doctor, and playwright active in the fir ...
(Russia) * Louis-Ferdinand Céline (France) * Blaise Cendrars (Switzerland) *
René Char René Émile Char (; 14 June 1907 – 19 February 1988) was a French poet and member of the French Resistance. Biography Char was born in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in the Vaucluse department of France, the youngest of the four children of Emile ...
(France) *
Inger Christensen Inger Christensen (16 January 1935 – 2 January 2009) was a Danish poet, novelist, essayist and editor. She is considered the foremost Danish poetic experimentalist of her generation. Life and work Born in the town of Vejle, on the eastern J ...
(Denmark) *
Jean Cocteau Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (, , ; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost creatives of the s ...
(France) * Alain Daniélou (France) *
Tibor Déry Tibor Déry (18 October 1894 in Budapest – 18 August 1977 in Budapest) was a Hungarian writer and poet. He also wrote under the names Tibor Dániel and Pál Verdes. György Lukács praised Dery as being "the greatest depicter of human b ...
(Hungary) *
Eugénio de Andrade Eugénio de Andrade was the pseudonym of GOSE, GCM José Fontinhas (19 January 1923 – 13 June 2005),His baptismal date reads 1 February 1923, however, every biographic book and the Eugénio de Andrade Foundation state 19 January 1923 Portu ...
(Portugal) * Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (France) * Madame de La Fayette (France) * Eça de Queiroz (Portugal) *
Tibor Déry Tibor Déry (18 October 1894 in Budapest – 18 August 1977 in Budapest) was a Hungarian writer and poet. He also wrote under the names Tibor Dániel and Pál Verdes. György Lukács praised Dery as being "the greatest depicter of human b ...
(Hungary) * Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (Italy) * Édouard Dujardin (France) *
Jenny Erpenbeck Jenny Erpenbeck (born 12 March 1967) is a German writer and opera director, recipient of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Life Born in East Berlin, Erpenbeck is the daughter of the physicist, philosopher and writer John Erpenbeck and the ...
(Germany) *
Hans Faverey Hans Antonius Faverey (14 September 1933, in Paramaribo – 8 July 1990, in Amsterdam) was a Dutch poet of Surinam descent. Besides being a poet, he was a lecturer at the psychology department of the Universiteit Leiden. Biography Faverey was ...
(Netherlands) *
Gustave Flaubert Gustave Flaubert ( , , ; 12 December 1821 – 8 May 1880) was a French novelist. Highly influential, he has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "in Flauber ...
(France) * Romain Gary (France) *
Wilhelm Genazino Wilhelm Genazino (22 January 1943 – 12 December 2018) was a German journalist and author. He worked first as a journalist for the satirical magazine ''Pardon (magazine), pardon'' and for ''Lesezeichen''. From the early 1970s, he was a freelance ...
(Germany) * William Gerhardie (Russia) *
Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as tr ...
(Germany) *
Nikolai Gogol Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol; uk, link=no, Мико́ла Васи́льович Го́голь, translit=Mykola Vasyliovych Hohol; (russian: Яновский; uk, Яновський, translit=Yanovskyi) ( – ) was a Russian novelist, ...
(Russia) * Martin Grzimek (Germany) * Henri Guigonnat (France) *
Eugène Guillevic Eugène Guillevic (Carnac, Morbihan, France, August 5, 1907 Carnac – March 19, 1997 Paris) () was a French poet. Professionally, he went by the single name ''Guillevic''. Life He was born in the rocky landscape and marine environment of Br ...
(France) *
Lars Gustafsson Lars Erik Einar Gustafsson (17 May 1936 – 3 April 2016) was a Swedish poet, novelist, and scholar. Among his awards were the in 2006, the Goethe Medal in 2009, the Thomas Mann Prize in 2015, and the International Nonino Prize in Italy in 201 ...
(Sweden) *
Knut Hamsun Knut Hamsun (4 August 1859 – 19 February 1952) was a Norwegian writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. Hamsun's work spans more than 70 years and shows variation with regard to consciousness, subject, perspective ...
(Norway) *
Hermann Hesse Hermann Karl Hesse (; 2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include '' Demian'', '' Steppenwolf'', '' Siddhartha'', and '' The Glass Bead Game'', each of which explores an individual ...
(Germany) *
Alfred Jarry Alfred Jarry (; 8 September 1873 – 1 November 1907) was a French symbolist writer who is best known for his play ''Ubu Roi'' (1896). He also coined the term and philosophical concept of 'pataphysics. Jarry was born in Laval, Mayenne, France, ...
(France) *
Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typ ...
(Germany/Czech Republic) * Heinrich von Kleist (Germany) * Alexander Kluge (Germany) *
László Krasznahorkai László Krasznahorkai (; born 5 January 1954) is a Hungarian novelist and screenwriter known for difficult and demanding novels, often labeled postmodern, with dystopian and melancholic themes. Several of his works, including his novels '' S ...
(Hungary) *
Dezső Kosztolányi Dezső Kosztolányi (; March 29, 1885 – November 3, 1936) was a Hungarian writer, journalist, translator and also a speaker of Esperanto. He wrote in all literary genres, from poetry to essays to theatre plays. Building his own style, he used ...
(Hungary) * Miroslav Krleža (Yugoslavia) *
Siegfried Lenz Siegfried Lenz (; 17 March 19267 October 2014) was a German writer of novels, short stories and essays, as well as dramas for radio and the theatre. In 2000 he received the Goethe Prize on the 250th Anniversary of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's bi ...
(Germany) *
Luljeta Lleshanaku Luljeta Lleshanaku (born 1968, in Elbasan, Albania) is an Albanian literature, Albanian poetry, poet who is the recipient of the 2009 in literature, 2009 Crystal Vilenica award for European poets. She was educated in literature at the University ...
(Albania) *
Federico García Lorca Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936), known as Federico García Lorca ( ), was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblemat ...
(Spain) *
Stéphane Mallarmé Stéphane Mallarmé ( , ; 18 March 1842 – 9 September 1898), pen name of Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of ...
(France) * Javier Marías (Spain) * Henri Michaux (France) *
Frédéric Mistral Joseph Étienne Frédéric Mistral (; oc, Josèp Estève Frederic Mistral, 8 September 1830 – 25 March 1914) was a French writer of Occitan literature and lexicographer of the Provençal form of the language. He received the 1904 Nobel P ...
(France) * Eugenio Montale (Italy) * Vladimir Nabokov (Russia) *
Boris Pasternak Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (; rus, Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к, p=bɐˈrʲis lʲɪɐˈnʲidəvʲɪtɕ pəstɛrˈnak; 30 May 1960) was a Russian poet, novelist, composer and literary translator. Composed in 1917, Pa ...
(Russia) * Victor Pelevin (Russia) * Saint-John Perse (France) *
Raymond Queneau Raymond Queneau (; 21 February 1903 – 25 October 1976) was a French novelist, poet, critic, editor and co-founder and president of Oulipo ('' Ouvroir de littérature potentielle''), notable for his wit and cynical humour. Biography Queneau w ...
(France) *
Rainer Maria Rilke René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), shortened to Rainer Maria Rilke (), was an Austrian poet and novelist. He has been acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, and is widely recogn ...
(Germany) * Arthur Rimbaud (France) * Joseph Roth (Austria) *
W. G. Sebald Winfried Georg Sebald (18 May 1944 – 14 December 2001), known as W. G. Sebald or (as he preferred) Max Sebald, was a German writer and academic. At the time of his death at the age of 57, he was being cited by literary critics as one of the g ...
(Germany) *
Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and lite ...
(French) *
Dag Solstad Dag Solstad (born 16 July 1941) is a Norwegian novelist, short-story writer, and dramatist whose work has been translated into 20 languages. He has written nearly 30 books and is the only author to have received the Norwegian Literary Critics ...
(Norway) *
Stendhal Marie-Henri Beyle (; 23 January 1783 – 23 March 1842), better known by his pen name Stendhal (, ; ), was a 19th-century French writer. Best known for the novels ''Le Rouge et le Noir'' ('' The Red and the Black'', 1830) and ''La Chartreuse de ...
(France) *
Antonio Tabucchi Antonio Tabucchi (; 24 September 1943 – 25 March 2012) was an Italian writer and academic who taught Portuguese language and literature at the University of Siena, Italy. Deeply in love with Portugal, he was an expert, critic and translator ...
(Italy) * Yoko Tawada (Japan/Germany) * Uwe Timm (Germany) *
Leonid Tsypkin Leonid Borisovich Tsypkin (Леонид Борисович Цыпкин) (March 20, 1926 – March 20, 1982) was a Soviet writer and medical doctor, best known for his book ''Summer in Baden-Baden''. Early life Tsypkin was born in Minsk, Soviet ...
(Russia) * Tomas Tranströmer (Sweden) *
Dubravka Ugrešić Dubravka Ugrešić (; born 27 March 1949) is a Yugoslav and later Croatian writer. A graduate of University of Zagreb, she has been based in Amsterdam since 1996 and refuses to identify as a Croatian writer. Early life and education Ugreši� ...
(Yugoslavia) * Paul Valéry (France) * Enrique Vila-Matas (Spain) * Elio Vittorini (Italy) * Robert Walser (Switzerland) *
Zinovy Zinik Zinovy Zinik (russian: Зиновий Зиник; born 16 June 1945) is a Russian-born British novelist, short-story writer and essayist. Life and career A native of Moscow, Zinik studied art at one of the city's art schools and later studied ...
(Russia) Chinese and Japanese literature * Ah Cheng (China) * Gu Cheng (China) *
Bei Dao Bei Dao (, born August 2, 1949) is the pen name of the Chinese-American writer Zhao Zhenkai (S: 赵振开, T: 趙振開, P: ''Zhào Zhènkāi''). Among the most acclaimed Chinese-language poets of his generation, he is often regarded as a candida ...
(China) * Osamu Dazai (Japan) *
Shūsaku Endō was a Japanese author who wrote from the rare perspective of a Japanese Catholic. Internationally, he is known for his 1966 historical fiction novel ''Silence'', which was adapted into a 2016 film of the same name by director Martin Scorsese. ...
(Japan) * Tu Fu (China) * Kōno Taeko (Japan) *
Yukio Mishima , born , was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, Shintoist, nationalist, and founder of the , an unarmed civilian militia. Mishima is considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century. He was considered fo ...
(Japan) *
Teru Miyamoto is a Japanese author. Biography Miyamoto was born in Kobe, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan and graduated from the faculty of letters at Otemon Gakuin University after which he became a copywriter. In 1970, he began to write his first novel and quit his ...
(Japan) *
Li Po Li Bai (, 701–762), also pronounced as Li Bo, courtesy name Taibai (), was a Chinese poet, acclaimed from his own time to the present as a brilliant and romantic figure who took traditional poetic forms to new heights. He and his friend Du Fu ...
(China) * Li Qingzhao (China) *
Ihara Saikaku was a Japanese poet and creator of the " floating world" genre of Japanese prose (''ukiyo-zōshi''). Born as Hirayama Tōgo (平山藤五), the son of a wealthy merchant in Osaka, he first studied haikai poetry under Matsunaga Teitoku and lat ...
(Japan) *
Kazuko Shiraishi is a Japanese poet and translator who was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She is a modernist, outsider poet who got her start in Katsue Kitazono's "VOU" poetry group, which led Shiraishi to publish her first book of poems in 1951. S ...
(Japan) * Yoko Tawada (Japan/Germany) * Yūko Tsushima (Japan) * Wang Anyi (China) * Wang Wei (China) * Tian Wen (China) * Mu Xin (China) * Can Xue (China) * Qian Zhongshu (China) Middle Eastern and Indian literature * Ilango Adigal (India) * Ahmed Ali (Pakistan) *
Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist tradition, he was born in L ...
*
Albert Cossery Albert Cossery (3 November 1913 – 22 June 2008) was an Egyptian-born French writer. Although Cossery lived most of his life in Paris and only wrote in the French language, all of his novels were either set in his country of birth, Egypt, or in ...
(Egypt) * Yoel Hoffmann (Israel) * Qurratulain Hyder (India) *
Abdelfattah Kilito Abdelfattah Kilito ( ar, عبد الفتاح كيليطو; born 10 April 1945, in Rabat) is a Moroccan writer. He is the author of several books in Arabic and in French. He has also written articles for magazines such as ''Poétique'' and '' Stud ...
(Morocco) *
Dunya Mikhail Dunya Mikhail (born 1965 in Baghdad, Iraq) is an Iraqi-American poet based in the United States. Life She was born and raised in Iraq to a Chaldean-Catholic family. She graduated with a BA from the University of Baghdad. Mikhail worked as a jo ...
(Iraq) *
Raja Rao Raja Rao (8 November 1908 – 8 July 2006) was an Indian-American writer of English-language novels and short stories, whose works are deeply rooted in metaphysics. '' The Serpent and the Rope'' (1960), a semi-autobiographical novel recounting ...
(India) * Aharon Shabtai (Israel)


Bestsellers

* '' Labyrinths'', Jorge Luis Borges * ''
A Coney Island of the Mind ''A Coney Island of the Mind'' is a collection of poetry by Lawrence Ferlinghetti originally published in 1958. It contains some of Ferlinghetti’s most famous poems, such as “I Am Waiting” and “Junkman's Obbligato”, which were created f ...
'', Lawrence Ferlinghetti * '' Siddhartha'', Hermann Hesse * ''
Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry ''Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry'' (1973) is the penultimate novel by the late British avant-garde novelist B. S. Johnson. It is the metafictional account of a disaffected young man, Christie Malry, who applies the principles of double-entry b ...
'', B. S. Johnson * '' Selected Poems'', Denise Levertov * ''
The Air-Conditioned Nightmare ''The Air-Conditioned Nightmare'' is a memoir written by Henry Miller, first published in 1945, about his year-long road trip across the United States in 1940, following his return from nearly a decade living in Paris. Background Miller was born ...
'', Henry Miller * ''
Nausea Nausea is a diffuse sensation of unease and discomfort, sometimes perceived as an urge to vomit. While not painful, it can be a debilitating symptom if prolonged and has been described as placing discomfort on the chest, abdomen, or back of th ...
'', Jean-Paul Sartre * '' Turtle Island'', Gary Snyder * '' Miss Lonelyhearts'' & ''
The Day of the Locust ''The Day of the Locust'' is a 1939 novel by American author Nathanael West set in Hollywood, California. The novel follows a young artist from the Yale School of Fine Arts named Tod Hackett, who has been hired by a Hollywood studio to do scen ...
'', Nathanael West * ''
The Glass Menagerie ''The Glass Menagerie'' is a memory play by Tennessee Williams that premiered in 1944 and catapulted Williams from obscurity to fame. The play has strong autobiographical elements, featuring characters based on its author, his Histrionic persona ...
'', Tennessee Williams * '' Selected Poems'', William Carlos Williams * '' The Cantos'', Ezra Pound


References


Further reading

* Laughlin, James. ''The Way It Wasn't.'' Ed. Barbara Epler and Daniel Javitch. New York: New Directions, 2006. *


External links


New Directions Publishing WebsiteWill Hall Books-- Checklist of early authors and books published by New Directions PressAlvin Lustig
*'' The New Inquiry'' ttp://thenewinquiry.com/post/1534825327/judging-books-by-their-covers on The New Directions Pearl series{{Authority control Book publishing companies based in New York (state) Companies based in New York City Publishing companies established in 1936 1936 establishments in New York (state)