New Directions Publishing Corp. is an independent book publishing company that was founded in 1936 by James Laughlin (1914–1997) and incorporated in 1964. Its offices are located at 80 Eighth Avenue in New York City.

History

New Directions was born in 1936 of

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Ita ...

'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" ''Un ...

Marianne Moore Marianne Craig Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was an American Modernism, modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for its formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit. In 1968 Nobel Prize in Li ...

, Wallace Stevens, Thomas Merton, 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'', he was one of the most influential film critics in the United States. His autob ...

, 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

and William Carlos Williams, 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 three ...

was published as a poet for the 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 Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Rus ...

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'' and '' Stephen Hero'' by

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...

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 Jay Gatsby, a mysterious mi ...

'' 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 ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...

* 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 Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...

* 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 (NBA) 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. ...

* 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 ( , "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 of only 10 euros, but resul ...

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

Man Booker International Prize

* Laszlo Krasznahorkai / George Szirtes and Ottilie Mulzet, 2015

Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

* Jenny Erpenbeck / Susan Bernofsky, 2015

Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize

* 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

* 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. 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 Germans, German-Swiss people, Swiss poet and novelist, and the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His interest in Eastern philosophy, Eastern religious, spiritual, and philosophic ...
's ''Siddhartha'' and '' The Night of the Iguana'' by Tennessee Williams.^{/sup>

Authors

New Directions was the first American publisher of such notables as Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Rus ...
, 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 regarded as a key figure in Spanish literature, Spanish-language and international literatur ...
, and Henry Miller. Today, their authors include:

American literature

* Walter Abish
* Will Alexander
* John Allman
* Sherwood Anderson
* Wayne Andrews
* David Antin
* Paul Auster

Paul Benjamin Auster (February 3, 1947 – April 30, 2024) was an American writer, novelist, memoirist, poet, and filmmaker. His notable works include '' The New York Trilogy'' (1987), '' Moon Palace'' (1989), '' The Music of Chance'' (1990), ' ...

* Jimmy Santiago Baca
* Djuna Barnes
* Lee Bartlett
* Kay Boyle
* William Bronk
* Frederick Busch
* Hayden Carruth
* Tom Clark
* Peter Cole
* Cid Corman

* Gregory Corso
* Robert Creeley
* Guy Davenport
* Edward Dahlberg
* Helen DeWitt
* Debra Di Blasi
* H.D.
* Coleman Dowell
* Robert Duncan
* Richard Eberhart
* William Everson
* Lawrence Ferlinghetti
* Thalia Field
* F. Scott Fitzgerald
* Robert Fitzgerald
* Forrest Gander
* John Gardner

* Allen Grossman
* John Hawkes
* David Hinton

David Hinton is an American poet and translator who specializes in Chinese literature and poetry.
Life
He studied Chinese at Cornell University, and in Taiwan. He lives in Calais, Vermont, East Calais, Vermont.
Awards
* 1997 Academy of American ...

* 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 America ...

* Alvin Levin
* Denise Levertov
* Nathaniel Mackey

Nathaniel Mackey is an American poet, novelist, anthologist, literary critic and editor. He is the Reynolds Price Professor of Creative Writing at Duke University and a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets. Mackey is currently teachi ...

* 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
Carole Maso ...

* Michael McClure

Michael McClure (October 20, 1932 – May 4, 2020) was an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets (including Allen Ginsberg) who read at the famo ...

* Thomas Merton
* 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 nonfiction. Her novels ''Black ...

* Charles Olson

Charles John Olson (27 December 1910 – 10 January 1970) was a second generation modernist United States poetry, American poet who was a link between earlier Literary modernism, modernist figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams an ...

* Toby Olson
* George Oppen
* Michael Palmer
* Kenneth Patchen

Kenneth Patchen (December 13, 1911January 8, 1972) was an American poet and novelist. He experimented with different forms of writing and incorporated painting, drawing, and jazz music into his works, which have been compared with those of Will ...

* Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Ita ...
''The Pisan Cantos'', New York, New Directions, 194

- 200

/ref>
* Kenneth Rexroth
* William Saroyan
* Delmore Schwartz
* Frederic Tuten
* Rosmarie Waldrop
* Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905 – September 15, 1989) was an American poet, novelist, literary critic and professor at Yale University. He was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern ...

* 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 three ...

* William Carlos Williams
* Louis Zukofsky

Louis Zukofsky (January 23, 1904 – May 12, 1978) was an American poet. He was the primary instigator and theorist of the so-called "Objectivist" poets, a short lived collective of poets who after several decades of obscurity would reemerge a ...

Central American, South American, and Caribbean literature

* César Aira (Argentina)
* Martín Adán (Peru)
* Homero Aridjis

Homero Aridjis (born April 6, 1940) is a Mexican poetry, poet, novelist, environmental activist, journalism, journalist, and former ambassador and ex-president of PEN International.
Family and early life
Aridjis was born in Contepec, Michoacán, ...
(Mexico)
* Roberto Bolaño (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 regarded as a key figure in Spanish literature, Spanish-language and international literatur ...
(Argentina)
* Kamau Brathwaite (Barbados)

* Coral Bracho (México)
* Ernesto Cardenal (Nicaragua)
* Adolfo Bioy Casares (Argentina)
* Horacio Castellanos Moya (El Salvador)
* Julio Cortázar (Argentina)
* Felisberto Hernández (Uruguay)

* Vicente Huidobro (Chile)
* Enrique Lihn (Chile)
* Clarice Lispector (Brazil)
* Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda ( ; ; born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto; 12 July 190423 September 1973) was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 13 years old an ...
(Chile)
* Nicanor Parra (Chile)
* Octavio Paz (Mexico)

* René Philoctète (Haiti)
* Rodrigo Rey Rosa (Guatemala)
* Guillermo Rosales (Cuba)
* Evelio Rosero (Colombia)
* Luis Fernando Verissimo (Brazil)

British, Irish, Canadian, and Australian literature

* Valentine Ackland
* Jessica Au
* H. E. Bates
* Martin Bax
* Carmel Bird
* Sir Thomas Browne
* Edwin Brock
* Christine Brooke-Rose
* Basil Bunting
* Elias Canetti

Elias Canetti (; 25 July 1905 – 14 August 1994; ; ) was a German-language writer, known as a Literary modernism, modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and nonfiction writer. Born in Ruse, Bulgaria, to a Sephardi Jews, Sephardic Jewish fam ...

* Anne Carson

* Joyce Cary
* Douglas Cleverdon
* Maurice Collis

Maurice Stewart Collis (10 January 1889 – 12 January 1973) was an administrator in Burma (Myanmar) when it was part of the British Empire, and afterwards a writer on Southeast Asia, China and other historical subjects.
Life
He was born in Du ...

* William Empson
* Caradoc Evans
* Gavin Ewart

Gavin Buchanan Ewart Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, FRSL (4 February 1916 – 23 October 1995) was a British poet who contributed to Geoffrey Grigson's ''New Verse'' at the age of seventeen.

Early life
Gavin Ewart was born in Lond ...

* Ronald Firbank
* Henry Green

Henry Green was the pen name of Henry Vincent Yorke (29 October 1905 – 13 December 1973), an English writer best remembered for the novels ''Party Going'', ''Living (novel), Living,'' and ''Loving (novel), Loving''. He published a total of n ...

* Christopher Isherwood
* James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...

* B. S. Johnson

* Hugh MacDiarmid
* Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen Military Cross, 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 Trench warfare, trenches and Chemi ...

* 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 wa ...

* Peter Dale Scott
* 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" ''Un ...

* Charles Tomlinson
* D. H. Lawrence

European literature

* Germano Almeida (Cape Verde)
* Corrado Alvaro (Italy)
* Alfred Andersch (Germany)
* Guillaume Apollinaire (France)
* Gennadiy Aygi (Russia)
* Honoré de Balzac (France)
* Jacques Barzun (France)
* Charles Baudelaire (France)
* Gottfried Benn (Germany)
* Nina Berberova (Russia)
* Giuseppe Berto (Italy)
* Johannes Bobrowski (Germany)
* Wolfgang Borchert (Germany)
* Johan Borgen (Norway)
* Alain Bosquet (France)
* Mikhail Bulgakov (Russia)
* Louis-Ferdinand Céline (France)
* Blaise Cendrars (Switzerland)
* René Char (France)
* Inger Christensen (Denmark)
* Jean Cocteau (France)
* Alain Daniélou (France)

* Tibor Déry (Hungary)
* Eugénio de Andrade (Portugal)
* Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (France)
* Madame de La Fayette (France)
* Eça de Queiroz (Portugal)
* Tibor Déry (Hungary)
* Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (Italy)
* Édouard Dujardin (France)
* Jenny Erpenbeck (Germany)
* Hans Faverey (Netherlands)
* Gustave Flaubert (France)
* Romain Gary (France)
* Wilhelm Genazino (Germany)
* William Gerhardie (Russia)
* Goethe (Germany)
* Nikolai Gogol (Russia)
* Martin Grzimek (Germany)
* Henri Guigonnat (France)
* Eugène Guillevic (France)
* Lars Gustafsson (Sweden)
* Knut Hamsun (Norway)
* Hermann Hesse

Hermann Karl Hesse (; 2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a Germans, German-Swiss people, Swiss poet and novelist, and the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His interest in Eastern philosophy, Eastern religious, spiritual, and philosophic ...
(Germany)

* Alfred Jarry (France)
* Franz Kafka (Germany/Czech Republic)
* Heinrich von Kleist (Germany)
* Alexander Kluge (Germany)
* László Krasznahorkai (Hungary)
* Dezső Kosztolányi (Hungary)
* Miroslav Krleža (Yugoslavia)
* Siegfried Lenz (Germany)
* Luljeta Lleshanaku (Albania)
* Federico García Lorca (Spain)
* Stéphane Mallarmé (France)
* Javier Marías (Spain)
* Henri Michaux (France)
* Frédéric Mistral (France)
* Eugenio Montale (Italy)
* Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Rus ...
(Russia)
* Boris Pasternak (Russia)
* Victor Pelevin (Russia)
* Saint-John Perse (France)
* Raymond Queneau (France)
* Rainer Maria Rilke (Germany)
* Arthur Rimbaud (France)

* Joseph Roth (Austria)
* W. G. Sebald (Germany)
* Jean-Paul Sartre (French)
* Dag Solstad (Norway)
* Stendhal (France)
* Antonio Tabucchi (Italy)
* Yoko Tawada (Japan/Germany)
* Uwe Timm (Germany)
* Leonid Tsypkin (Russia)
* Tomas Tranströmer (Sweden)
* Dubravka Ugrešić (Yugoslavia)
* Paul Valéry (France)
* Enrique Vila-Matas (Spain)
* Elio Vittorini (Italy)
* Robert Walser (writer), Robert Walser (Switzerland)
*Zinovy Zinik (Russia)

Chinese and Japanese literature

* Ah Cheng (China)
* Gu Cheng (China)
* Bei Dao (China)
* Osamu Dazai (Japan)
* Shūsaku Endō (Japan)
* Tu Fu (China)

* Takashi Hiraide (Japan)
* Taeko Kono (Japan)
* Yukio Mishima (Japan)
* Teru Miyamoto (Japan)
* Li Po (China)
* Li Qingzhao (China)

* Ihara Saikaku (Japan)
* Kazuko Shiraishi (Japan)
* Yoko Tawada (Japan/Germany)
* Yūko Tsushima (Japan)
* Wang Anyi (China)
* Wang Wei (Tang dynasty), Wang Wei (China)

* Lord Mengchang, Tian Wen (China)
* Mu Xin (artist), Mu Xin (China)
* Can Xue (China)
* Qian Zhongshu (China)

Southeast Asian literature

* Thuận (Vietnam)

Middle Eastern and Indian literature

* Ilango Adigal (India)
* Ahmed Ali (writer), Ahmed Ali(Pakistan)
* Buddha
* Albert Cossery (Egypt)

* Yoel Hoffmann (Israel)
* Qurratulain Hyder (India)
* Abdelfattah Kilito (Morocco)
* Dunya Mikhail (Iraq)

* Raja Rao (India)
* Aharon Shabtai (Israel)

Bestsellers

* ''Labyrinths (short story collection), Labyrinths'', Jorge Luis Borges
* ''A Coney Island of the Mind'', Lawrence Ferlinghetti
* ''Siddhartha (novel), Siddhartha'', Hermann Hesse
* ''Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry'', B. S. Johnson
* ''Selected Poems (Denise Levertov), Selected Poems'', Denise Levertov
* ''The Air-Conditioned Nightmare'', Henry Miller
* ''Nausea (novel), Nausea'', Jean-Paul Sartre
* ''Turtle Island (book), Turtle Island'', Gary Snyder
* ''Miss Lonelyhearts'' & ''The Day of the Locust'', Nathanael West
* ''The Glass Menagerie'', Tennessee Williams
* ''Selected Poems (William Carlos 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'' [http://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)}}