A Death In The Family

About the Author

James Agee was a writer with a precise and original talent, who was essentially a poet. This characteristic, in addition to his collection of poetry, Permit Me Voyage, appears clearly in his prose, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and The Morning Watch. It also gave a clear, artistic quality to his outstanding screen plays, among them "The Quiet One" and "The African Queen" and a yet to be produced screen biography of Gauguin which has been called a revolutionary approach to the film. Millions saw his superb film biography, "Mr. Lincoln," which was repeated three times on Omnibus over ABC Television.

Agee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. He went to St. Andrew's School, which was the background for The Morning Watch. After his family moved to Maine, he continued his studies at Exeter. While at Harvard he was editor of the Advocate. An assignment from Fortune Magazine led to the writing of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. During the last years of his life, he worked primarily in Hollywood, almost exclusively with John Huston and Charles Laughton.

His death of a heart attack in New York on May 16, 1955, at the age of forty-five, ended the career of a unique writer.