About New Directions
Founding
New Directions Publishing was founded in 1936 by James Laughlin IV while he was an undergraduate at Harvard. On the advice of Ezra Pound, who told the young writer he would never be any good as a poet and should do “something useful” instead, Laughlin decided to become a publisher. He began with the annual anthology New Directions in Prose and Poetry, which gave the press its name.
A Home for Literary Innovation
From its earliest days, New Directions championed experimental and avant-garde writing. The press became the American publisher for a remarkable roster of international modernists, including Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, H.D., Dylan Thomas, Henry Miller, Hermann Hesse, and Jorge Luis Borges.
Through the 1940s and 50s, New Directions helped introduce American readers to an extraordinary range of world literature. The press published key works by Yukio Mishima, Thomas Merton, Kenneth Rexroth, Denise Levertov, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and many others who would reshape the American literary landscape.
The New Directions Paperbook
In 1956, New Directions launched its iconic paperback series, New Directions Paperbooks (NDP). These affordable, elegantly designed editions made literary classics and contemporary international writing accessible to a wide audience. Each volume carries a spine number (NDP1, NDP2, etc.) that has become a hallmark of the series and a point of pride for collectors. The series now numbers well over 1,500 titles.
Design Legacy
New Directions has a distinctive design tradition, shaped in its early decades by the legendary Alvin Lustig, whose bold, abstract cover designs for the press in the 1940s and 50s are now recognized as masterpieces of American graphic design. Lustig’s covers — with their striking use of color, typography, and symbolic imagery — set a visual standard that continues to influence the press’s aesthetic.
International Literature
New Directions has long been one of the most important American publishers of literature in translation. The press has introduced English-speaking readers to essential works from around the world: the fiction of Roberto Bolaño, the poetry of Pablo Neruda and Octavio Paz, the prose of Clarice Lispector, the dramas of Euripides (in Anne Carson’s translations), the novels of W.G. Sebald, and the writings of Fernando Pessoa, César Vallejo, Bei Dao, and dozens more.
New Directions Today
James Laughlin led New Directions until his death in 1997. Today the press continues under the leadership of publisher Barbara Epler, maintaining its commitment to literary quality, international scope, and elegant design. Recent highlights include works by Jenny Erpenbeck, Yoko Tawada, Anne Carson, Clarice Lispector, Natalia Ginzburg, and many others.
New Directions remains an independent literary publisher — one of the longest-running in the United States — still dedicated to Laughlin’s founding vision of bringing readers “the best of world literature.”
About This Site
The Spine is an independent fan project — a comprehensive database covering every title published by New Directions since 1936. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by New Directions Publishing.
The site aims to help collectors, scholars, and readers explore the full breadth of the New Directions catalog, find copies across the collector market, and appreciate the remarkable literary legacy of this publisher.