Laughlin, James

born Oct. 30, 1914, Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S.

died Nov. 12, 1997, Norfolk, Conn.

U.S. publisher and poet.

Born to a wealthy family, Laughlin founded New Directions press in 1936 after graduating from Harvard. He established the company initially to publish ignored yet influential writers, including William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound, a friend and major influence on his life and work. New Directions editions of such authors as Dylan Thomas, Tennessee Williams, and Hermann Hesse (one of the many foreign authors it published in translation) eventually made the house, despite its small size, one of the most distinguished literary publishers in the U.S. Its inexpensive pocket-sized volumes had distinctive black-and-white covers that made them recognizable in any bookstore.

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▪ American publisher and poet

born Oct. 30, 1914, Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S.

died Nov. 12, 1997, Norfolk, Conn.

      American publisher and poet, founder of the New Directions press.

      The son of a steel manufacturer, Laughlin attended Choate School in Connecticut and Harvard University (B.A., 1939). In the mid-1930s Laughlin lived in Italy with Ezra Pound (Pound, Ezra), a major influence on his life and work; returning to the United States, he founded New Directions in 1936. Initially he intended to publish writings by ignored yet influential avant-garde writers of the period; Pound's The Cantos and William Carlos Williams (Williams, William Carlos)'s Paterson were among the works eventually issued by his press. During the 1940s New Directions also republished out-of-print novels by authors such as Henry James (James, Henry) and F. Scott Fitzgerald (Fitzgerald, F. Scott). Laughlin's distinctive paperback editions—with black-and-white covers—of such authors as Dylan Thomas (Thomas, Dylan), Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Ferlinghetti, Lawrence), Tennessee Williams (Williams, Tennessee), and Herman Hesse (Hesse, Hermann) proved very popular. New Directions also produced a large body of English translations of foreign authors, from classics by French writers such as Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (Laclos, Pierre Choderlos de), Arthur Rimbaud (Rimbaud, Arthur), and Charles Baudelaire (Baudelaire, Charles) to modern works by Dazai Osamu, Octavio Paz (Paz, Octavio), and Ernesto Cardenal (Cardenal, Ernesto). Besides publishing dozens of mid-20th-century poets, Laughlin himself wrote poetry noted for its warmth and imagination; Collected Poems was published in 1992, and Poems appeared posthumously in 1998. Among his prose writings are memoirs of Pound, Random Essays (1989), and Random Stories (1990). He also wrote articles about skiing.

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