CATALOGUE 15 CATALOGUE 15 4 E. Holly St., Suite 217, Pasadena, Ca 91103 · Tel. (626) 297-7700 ·
[email protected] www.WhitmoreRareBooks.com Books may be reserved by email:
[email protected] and by phone: (626) 297-7700 We welcome you to come visit our gallery by chance or appointment at: 4 E. Holly St., Suite 217, Pasadena, Ca 91103 For our complete inventory, including many first editions, signed books and other rare items, please visit our website at: www.WhitmoreRareBooks.com Follow us on social media! @WRareBooks @whitmorerarebooks whitmorerarebooks The Writings of Oscar Wilde - item 72 Catalogue 15 The striking product of a collaboration between photographer, Walker Evans, and writer, James Agee. 1. Agee, James and Walker Evans Let Us Now Praise Famous Men Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1941. First edition. A Near Fine copy on account of a faint red smudge to the closed page block, not affecting the inner sheets, otherwise in excellent condition. In a Very Good+ dust jacket that is faded along the spine, as usual, and with slight wear at the extremities, but no real chips or tears. “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” is the surprisingly striking product of a Fortune Magazine collaboration between photographer, Walker Evans, and writer, James Agee, in 1936. For four weeks they lived, worked alongside, and earned the trust of desolately impoverished sharecropping families in Alabama. Originally envisioned as a short article on sharecroppers in the Deep South amidst the reforms of President Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” Agee and Walker expanded the work considerably. Emotionally driven by the poverty they experienced, Agee and Walker crafted a fictionalized account of three families incorporating Evans’ powerful images.