A Death in the Family - James Agee [0]
Title Page
Copyright Page
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
PART TWO
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
PART THREE
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
ACCLAIM FOR James Agee’s
A DEATH IN THE FAMILY
“A Death in the Family remains one of the most beautifully written of all American novels. James Agee’s talent was both luxuriant and precise, and the opening sequence is still one of the finest prose poems in our language. He is one of those writers who cause other writers to shiver with pure pleasure.”—Pat Conroy
“People I know who read A Death in the Family forty years ago still talk about it. So do I. It is a great book, and I’m happy to see it done anew.”—Andre Dubus
“For as long as fiction is read, James Agee’s A Death in the Family stands as an American masterpiece. There is no stronger, more moving document in our literature than this account of a father’s sudden death in the early years of our century. Here are the full spectrum of emotion and resonance, the tensile, perfectly nuanced language, the prayerful inquiry into identity itself, and characters so perfectly rounded that they exist in every specificity of inquiry, acute awareness, dumb love, and sensual arrest. This book has been my Bible; may it bless new generations of readers.” —Jayne Anne Phillips
James Agee
A DEATH
IN THE FAMILY
James Agee was born in Tennessee in 1909 and graduated from Harvard University. His renowned study of Alabama sharecroppers during the Depression, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, appeared in 1941. Agee was known for his movie reviews and screenplays, and published a volume of poetry and a novella, as well. He died in 1955, two years before his major work of fiction, A Death in the Family, was published and won the Pulitzer Prize.
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First published in the United States of America by McDowell, Obolensky, Inc. 1957
Published by Grosset & Dunlap, Inc. 1967
Published in Penguin Books 2008
Copyright © The James Agee Trust, 1938, 1956, 1957
Copyright © The New Yorker Magazine, Inc., 1957
Copyright renewed Mia Agee, 1985
All rights reserved
Portions of this novel first appeared in Partisan Review, The Cambridge Review, The New Yorker, and Harper’s Bazaar.
eISBN : 978-1-440-64179-4
. Aison
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A NOTE ON THIS BOOK
JAMES AGEE DIED SUDDENLY May 16, 1955. This novel, upon which he had been working for many years, is presented here exactly as he wrote it. There has been no re-writing, and nothing has been eliminated except for a few cases of first-draft material which he later re-worked at greater