What was the first book of automatic writing published by Breton and Soupault?

The first book of automatic writing published by Breton and Soupault was Les Champs magnétiques. Written by André Breton and Philippe Soupault, it is widely regarded as the first major work of literary Surrealism.

The texts were produced in 1919 through experiments with écriture automatique, or automatic writing. The authors tried to let language emerge with minimal conscious planning, recording rapid associations, startling images, and abrupt shifts in meaning. Their method drew on ideas about dreams, the unconscious, and altered mental states.

The book was published in Paris by Au Sans Pareil in 1920. Its title means “The Magnetic Fields,” although the work is not a conventional narrative or collection of poems. It consists of prose passages whose disjointed imagery demonstrates the Surrealists’ attempt to bypass ordinary literary logic.

A common mix-up is Poisson soluble, another Breton work associated with Surrealist writing, and Nadja, his later prose book from 1928. Neither was the collaborative first book of automatic writing created by Breton and Soupault.