Limit this search to....

The Luck of Friendship: The Letters of Tennessee Williams and James Laughlin
Contributor(s): Laughlin, James (Author), Williams, Tennessee (Author), Fox, Peggy (Editor)
ISBN: 0393246205     ISBN-13: 9780393246209
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
OUR PRICE:   $35.96  
Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats
Published: March 2018
Qty:
Temporarily out of stock - Will ship within 2 to 5 weeks
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Literary Figures
- Literary Collections | Letters
Dewey: B
LCCN: 2018000448
Physical Information: 1.6" H x 6.1" W x 9.4" (1.65 lbs) 432 pages
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:

In December 1942, two guests at a Lincoln Kirstein mixer bonded over their shared love of Hart Crane's poetry. One of them was James Laughlin, the founder of a small publishing company called New Directions, which he had begun only seven years earlier as a sophomore at Harvard. The other was a young playwright named Thomas Lanier Williams, or Tennessee, as he had just started to call himself. A little more than a week after that first encounter, Tennessee sent a letter to Jay--as he always addressed Laughlin in writing-- expressing a desire to get together for an informal discussion of some of Tennessee's poetry. I promise you it would be extremely simple, he wrote, and we would inevitably part on good terms even if you advised me to devote myself exclusively to the theatre for the rest of my life.

So began a deep friendship that would last for forty-one years, through critical acclaim and rejection, commercial success and failure, manic highs, bouts of depression, and serious and not-so-serious liaisons. Williams called Laughlin his literary conscience, and New Directions serves to this day as Williams's publisher, not only for The Glass Menagerie and his other celebrated plays but for his highly acclaimed novels, short stories, and volumes of poetry as well. Their story provides a window into the literary history of the mid-twentieth century and reveals the struggles of a great artist, supported in his endeavors by the publisher he considered a true friend.


Contributor Bio(s): Keith, Thomas: - Thomas Keith began his association with James Laughlin, Peggy L. Fox, and New Directions in 1987 and has edited the Tennessee Williams titles for New Directions since 2002. He works as a consultant, editor, and acting teacher in New York City.Fox, Peggy: - Peggy L. Fox is the former president and publisher of New Directions, was Tennessee Williams's last editor, and is James Laughlin's literary coexecutor. She lives in Athens, New York.