Description
First edition of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans, in a vibrant first state dust jacket.
Octavo, xvi, 471pp. Black cloth, title in silver on spine. No additional printings listed. Solid text block, light rubbing to cloth, faint offsetting to endpapers, near fine condition. In the publisher’s first state dust jacket, $3.50 retail price on front flap, light rubbing along edges, touch of soiling to rear cover. An exceptionally clean, near fine example without the typical sunning to the spine. Includes 31 reproductions of Walter Evans’ photographs at the front. (Roth, 108-109) Housed in a custom black morocco clamshell, title in gilt on spine.
This project, a landmark collaboration between author James Agee and photographer Walker Evans, was originally funded by Fortune Magazine in 1936. The article looked to detail the experience of sharecroppers throughout the American South during the Great Depression. Following the eight weeks Agee and Evans spent on location in Alabama, Fortune editors rejected the somber photos and harrowing notes. Fortune granted the pair permission to take the book elsewhere, then Let Us Now Praise Famous Men was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1941.
