Born November 27, 1909
Knoxville, Tennessee

Died May 16, 1955
New York, New York

Poet, novelist, movie critic,
movie scriptwriter

James Agee. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

"The talk, in the end, was his great distinguishing feature. He talked his prose, Agee prose.… It rolled just as it reads; but he made it sound natural.…"

Walker Evans, in the introduction to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Although a relatively young man when he died at age forty-five, James Agee filled his years with a variety of literary pursuits. He wrote poetry, movie scripts, movie critiques, short prose, and novels. His best-known works are a documentary on white tenant farmers in the Deep South, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, first published in 1941; a short novel called The Morning Watch, published in 1951; and a longer novel, A Death in the Family, published in 1957, after his death. Agee's literary themes...