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Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Background
- Agee, a writer for Fortune, was assigned to do a piece on sharecroppers in the Deep South for the magazine in 1936. As Agee requested, Walker Evans was asked to take the accompanying photographs.
- It took Agee and Evans much longer than anticipated to complete the work--a month alone was spent finding the right families to focus upon.
- Agee labored over a draft article for Fortune, but it was rejected. Harpers agreed to publish it, but then backed out once they received the draft. Finally, in 1941, Houghton Mifflin published the book, after Agee's editor advised him to omit whatever words were "illegal in Massachusetts."
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