DIRECTION
Volume 3, Number 1: January 1940
W. L. River, William Gropper, Thomas Cochran
and M. Tjader Harris [Editors]
W. L. River, William Gropper, Thomas Cochran and M. Tjader Harris [Editors]: DIRECTION. Darien, CT: Volume 3, Number 1, January 1940. Original Edition. Slim Quarto. Stapled printed wrappers. 28 pp. Illustrated articles and advertisements. Cover by William Gropper. Wrappers lightly worn. A nearly fine copy.
8.25 x 10.75 saddle-stitched magazine with 28 pages of fiction, social commentary and art. Early issue of the legendary Progressive journal that chronicled the troubles of its times through the prisms of fiction, photography, music, art, drama and humor.
Contents
- An American Art Number: William Gropper
- American Artists Congress: Arthur Emptage
- Representative Paintings
- An American Group, Inc.
- Representative Paintings
- Quoth the Craven: Nevermore
- American Art: Jerome Klein
- New York City WPA Art Project
- Representative Paintings
- "My Lord, What a Morning!" : Buford Mecklin
- What Are They Fighting For?: George Seldes
- Homage to Heywood: George Seldes
- Art Young: H. Glintenkamp
- Interview with Angna Enters
- Departments include Books by Henry Hart, Music by Elie Sagmeister, Stage by John W. Gassner and Cultural Front
Includes artwork by Art Young, Sol Wilson, John Lonergan Warren Wheelock, Mervin Jules, Isaac Soyer, Louis Lozowick, Abraham Harriton, Morris Neworth Nahun Tschacbasov, Russell Limbach, Henry Kallem, Morris Shulman, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Algot Stenbery, Julian Levi, Joseph Di Martini, Chaim Gross, Louis Slobodkin, Eugenie Gershog, Elizabeth Terrell, Frederick Knight, Helen McAuslan, L. Ribak, Jack Markow, Paul Burlin, Philip Evergood, Saul Berman, Adolf Dehn, Stuart Edie, Anton Refregier, Francis Criss, Karl Fortess, Cesare Stea, Axel Horr, Maurice Glickman, Walter Quirt, Ruth Chaney, Harry Gottlieb, David Feinstein, Beatrice Mandelman, Richard Sussman, Ruth Gikow, Max Baum, Clifton Bell (Negro), Everee Jimison (Negro), M. Soyer, and Louis Schanker.
Edited by William Gropper, et al, including contributing editors Richard Wright, Kenneth Burke and Edwin Seaver. A dynamic, frequently visually striking, consistently left of center journal of literature and the arts, drawing on the foundations left by the WPA for much of its brilliance. A substantial roster of contributors appeared through its tenure, including Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, Le Corbusier, Erskine Caldwell, Kenneth Rexroth, Richard Wright, Kees, Larsson, Abel, Kemp, Anderson, Herbst, Scott, Brown, Art Young, Halper, Komroff, Macleod, Margaret Bourke White, Burke, di Donato, Woody Guthrie, Seldes, Lorentz, Hughes, Maltz, Chaplin, Sandburg, R. Lowry, Ellison, Morris, et al. A major 20th century American periodical which is increasingly difficult to acquire in decent condition.
Marguerite Tjader (1901 – 1986) was born in New York City, the daughter of Richard Tjader, a big game hunter, explorer, and evangelist, and Margaret (Thorne) Tjader, daughter of the financier Samuel Thorne. She attended Bryn Mawr College and Columbia University, where she received the A.B. degree in 1925. Her marriage to Overton Harris ended in divorce in 1933. Their son, Hilary (1929-1999), became a documentary filmmaker, receiving an Oscar in 1962 for his direction of 'Seaward the great ships'. From 1937 until 1945 Mrs. Harris edited 'Direction', the left-wing journal of the arts she founded with the support of Theodore Dreiser. She had met Dreiser at a dinner party in 1928 and their intimate relationship continued off and on until 1944 when he finally married Helen Patges Richardson, his companion of almost 30 years. In 1944 Mrs. Harris and her son moved to Los Angeles where she became one in a long succession of Dreiser editorial assistants. In addition to typing and editing drafts of his work she acted as a sort of 'spiritual advisor' to Dreiser while he completed his penultimate novel 'The bulwark', published posthumously in 1946. Marguerite Tjader Harris is probably the model for the title character of 'Lucia', one of the fictional sketches in Dreiser's 'A gallery of women', published in 1929. During the 1930's, presumably after the dissolution of her marriage, Mrs. Harris, who had been raised a Baptist, converted to Roman Catholicism. In the 1950's she helped Mother Elisabeth Hesselblad establish the U.S. foundation of of the Order of the Most Holy Saviour of Saint Bridget (Bridgettines) by donating Vikingsborg, her family's summer home in Darien, Conn., to the order. She died on April 7, 1986 in East Windsor, Conn.