Originating in 1916 with the avant-garde Dada movement at the famous Cafe Voltaire in Zurich, surrealism aimed to unleash the powers of the creative act without thinking. Max Ernst, Andre Breton, Tristan Tzara, Paul Eluard, Philippe Soupault, and Louis Aragon created a movement that spread wildly to all corners of the globe, inspiring not only poetry but also artists like Joan Miro and Rene Magritte and cinematic works by Antonin Artaud, Luis Bunuel, and Salvador Dali. As the editor, Mary Ann Caws, says, "Essential to surrealist behavior is a constant state of openness, of readiness for whatever occurs, whatever marvelous object we might come across, manifesting itself against the already thought, the already lived."

Here are the gems of this major, mind-bending aesthetic, political, and humane movement: writers as diverse as Aragon, Breton, Dali, Rene Char, Robert Desnos, Mina Loy, Paul Magritte, Alice Paalen, Gisele Prassinos, Man Ray, Kay Sage, and Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven are included here, providing a grand picture of this revolutionary movement that shocked the world.