A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF HENRY Miller’s complete oeuvre presents a daunting challenge. Because his works were often published first as pamphlets, small-press, or privately printed editions, many of the titles recur. I have limited this bibliography to the noting of the first appearance of the work and the currently available edition.
Henry’s early books were published in France (in English) to take advantage of a loophole in the French obscenity law. Consequently we find first editions appearing in Paris and then the same work reappearing later in America, often after much litigation. In other cases, various anthologies of Miller’s work (minus the sexually oriented pieces) were put together as a way of avoiding prosecution for obscenity
FULL-LENGTH WORKS
TROPIC OF CANCER. OBELISK Press, Paris, 1934; Grove Press, New York, 1961.
Henry Miller’s first published book, but not the first he ever wrote. Preceded by Moloch and Crazy Cock (not published until well after his death), Tropic of Cancer is the exuberant sound of a new voice in American literature. A picaresque rant about one man’s odyssey through bohemian, depression-era Paris. The sex was what everyone noticed first, but reading it now we notice the directness of description and the almost Zen-like acceptance of the good and bad in life.
Black Spring. Obelisk Press, Paris, 1936; Grove Press, New York, 1963.
Henry’s second book-length work, conceived as a self-portrait, contains such short and hallucinatory pieces as “The Angel Is My Watermark!” “A Saturday Afternoon,” “Into the Night Life …” It also contains the autobiographical gems “The Tailor Shop,” and “The Fourteenth Ward.” Prefaced with the quote “What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature,” this book is dedicated to Anaïs Nin and remained one of Henry’s favorites. Many of the pieces in it first appeared in the U.S. in The Cosmological Eye (see below).
Max and the White Phagocytes. Obelisk Press, Paris, 1938.
A miscellany of essays and tales, many of which later appear in The Cosmological Eye.
Tropic of Capricorn. Obelisk Press, Paris, 1939; Grove Press, New York, copyright © 1961, released in 1962.
Henry Miller’s second novel, dedicated “TO HER.” This novel jumps back to Henry’s New York life, childhood, mother, Brooklyn, first loves, The Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company, and the pivotal mad love for June. Henry creates a vast tomb in which to bury this agonizing and inspiring muse.
The Cosmological Eye. New Directions, New York, 1939.
The first book of Henry’s to be published in his native country, it contains essays, memoirs, pieces which first appeared in Black Spring and Max and the White Phagocytes. Reprints such treasures as Henry’s autobiographical memoir “The Tailor Shop,” “Un Etre Etoilique,” (Henry’s discussion of Anaïs Nin and her journals), and many other wonderful genre-defying shorter works.
The Colossus of Maroussi. Colt Press, California, 1941; New Directions, New York, 1958.
Henry’s spiritual travel book about Greece. His central work, and one of his best written. Has none of the unevenness one finds in Nexus, Sexus, Plexus. Its “hero,” the so-called colossus of Maroussi (George Katsimbalis), is marginal in the book, but he became a “hanger” for Henry’s own heroism. Maroussi stands squarely in the tradition of Walden.
Hamlet, Vol. I and II. With Michael Fraenkel, Carrefour, Puerto Rico, 1939; Mexico, 1941; Hamlet Letters. Capra Press, California, 1988.
Letters between Henry and Fraenkel (written 1935–38), which started out with Shakespeare and strayed everywhere else, as usual. Miller’s letters are philosophical essays on writing, philosophy, movies, Jews, and the thought-disease of modern man.
The World of Sex. Argus Book Shop, Chicago, 1941.
Henry’s explication of the role of the “obscene” in his art and the relationship of sex to literature. A central self-analysis. Though Henry was only known to a coterie at this point, he treats his own contribution as if he knows how major his oeuvre would prove to be.
The Air-Conditioned Nightmare. New Directions, New York, 1945.
Henry’s phantasmagoric travel book about America. Deliriously antipatriotic and prophetic of the current decline of America.
A Devil in Paradise. Signet (New American Library), New York, 1946.
A long essay (eventually incorporated into Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch) relating the invasion of Henry’s Big Sur paradise by Conrad Moricand, an old friend from Paris of the thirties, who, hearing of Henry’s “success,” decided to descend upon him. Typically, Henry cabled him “our home is yours.” He was certainly to regret it. One of the most amusing accounts of the troubles Henry’s generosity got him into.
Remember to Remember. New Directions, New York, 1941.
Subtitled Volume 2 of The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, this book is really a series of essays and portraits. It contains studies of such Miller-friends as Jean Varda, Abe Rattner, and Jasper Deeter. “Obscenity and the Law of Reflection,” Miller’s major piece on the uses of sex to awaken the reader, appears here, as does “Artist and Public” and “Remember to Remember,” a strange and beautiful piece about memory, forgetfulness, and Miller’s recollections of his expatriate decade in Europe.
The Wisdom of the Heart. New Directions, New York, 1941.
Another Miller miscellany, dedicated “to Richard Galen Osborn…. who rescued me from starvation in Paris and set my feet in the right direction. May heaven protect him and guide him safely to port.” Contains “Mademoiselle Claude,” the first piece in which Miller’s direct first-person voice asserted itself clearly; “The Philosopher Who Philosophizes,” a curious little riff, written on Corfu, about Keyserling, and “The Enormous Womb,” a Henry-ish essay on birth, death, illusion, and world peace.
The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder. Duell, Sloane & Pearce, New York, 1948; New Directions, New York, 1948.
Henry’s story of Auguste, the famous clown who wanted more than to make his audience laugh. He wanted to give them ecstasy and illumination, and in so doing found it for himself. A most atypical Miller text, both for its brevity, and because it is a philosophical parable, written in the third person. Henry says in the epilogue that it was provoked by a request from Fernand Léger that he provide a text to accompany forty illustrations of clowns and circuses. By the time Léger had rejected it as unsuitable, Henry found he had already written something he was very pleased with. The first edition (1948) had reproductions of works by Picasso, Chagall, Rouault, Klee, among others, and a later edition (1958) was illustrated by Henry himself.
Nights of Love and Laughter. Signet (New American Library), New York, 1955.
Anthology containing “The Brooklyn Bridge,” “Mademoiselle Claude,” an excerpt from Maroussi, and an excellent introduction by Kenneth Rexroth that evokes Henry’s innocence and naïveté. Rexroth recognizes that Henry is a naïf and a truth-teller like Petronius or Casanova.
The Books in My Life. New Directions, New York, 1952, 1969.
Proof that Henry regarded books as living beings, which influenced him every bit as much as the people in his life. Idiosyncratic Henry-essays on Rider Haggard, Blaise Cendrars, Jean Giono, John Cowper Powys, Krishnamurti, and others. Contains a marvelous essay entitled “Reading in the Toilet,” that brings together all Henry’s preoccupations, from bookishness to excrement to enlightenment. A wonderful collection. It proves that the impetus to become a writer is the joy of having been a reader.
The Time of the Assassins: A Study of Rimbaud. New Directions, New York, 1946, 1962.
Purportedly a study of Rimbaud, but really a study of Henry. It illuminates his attachment to his mother’s womb and his many efforts to struggle free. By analyzing Rimbaud’s passion for liberty, he analyzes his own. Contains the amazing sentence: “There are obsessive, repetitive words which a writer uses which are more revealing than all the facts which are amassed by patient biographers.” Henry points to Rimbaud’s constant repetition of eternity, charity, solitude, anguish, light, and pronounces them “the warp and woof of his inner pattern.” Not proper literary criticism, but criticism lifted to the level of philosophy and self-analysis.
Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. New Directions, New York, 1957.
Henry’s poetic evocation of the wild, rocky coast of California’s Big Sur, its birds, its magic, its mystery: “Nature smiling at herself in the mirror of eternity.” For Henry, the West was full of “dreamers, outlaws, forerunners.” He became a westerner himself and Big Sur was the catalyst. Unfortunately Henry blasted this earthly paradise by writing the book. From then on fans and curiosity seekers were drawn to Big Sur, and they made it impossible for him to continue writing there. Like Maroussi, this book is a strong response to the spirit of a place; it goes beyond nature writing and becomes meditation.
The Intimate Henry Miller. Signet (New American Library), New York, 1959. A paperback original.
Still another assortment—many published elsewhere before. This collection contains an excellent introduction by Lawrence Clark Powell, the U.C.L.A. librarian who became Henry’s friend, inspired The Books In My Life, and brought Henry Miller’s collected papers to their present place of honor in the Special Collections of the U.C.L.A. library.
The Henry Miller Reader, edited by Lawrence Durrell. New Directions, New York, 1959.
A fairly complete Miller reader, containing literary essays, portraits, stories, pieces of Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, Maroussi, Black Spring, and Tropic of Cancer, as well as a chronology of Miller’s life, written by Henry especially for this edition. The introduction by Lawrence Durrell calls Henry a “great vagabond of literature.” Here, Durrell stresses Miller’s uncategorizability: “I suspect that his final place will be among those towering anomalies of authorship like Whitman or Blake, who have left us, not simply works of art, but a corpus of ideas which motivate and influence a whole cultural pattern.” Also has an introduction and headnotes to each selection by Henry himself.
SEXUS, The Rosy Crucifixion, Book One. Obelisk Press/Editions du Chêne, Paris, 1949; Grove Press, New York, 1965.
A vast, chaotic novel of Henry’s New York origins and his emancipation into the writing life. Sexus begins with Henry’s meeting Mara, the taxi dancer (based on June), who turns on him “the full incandescent radiance of her love.” It is Mara who proposes: “Why don’t you try to write?” This book is the story of Henry’s response to that provocation. Full of insights into the writer’s life, it has a driving energy, but, as a whole, proves V.S. Pritchett’s theory that if you remove the weaknesses of a book, you also remove the strengths. Bombast and bad writing abound, but it is nonetheless worth reading for the accuracy with which it captures Henry’s desperate need to become a writer.
PLEXUS, The Rosy Crucifixion. Olympia Press, Paris, 1953; Grove Press, New York, 1963.
Another installment of the June/becoming-a-writer story. Here the muse is called Mona and the book begins with our hero’s moving in with her in Brooklyn. Covers Henry Miller’s Greenwich Village life, the speakeasy, Henry’s first attempts to compete with James Joyce by writing for a fee. It seems that each time Henry went back to this old material he discovered new treasures. And yet, it is the ending digression of Plexus—an elaborate cadenza about Spengler, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Hesse, and the Tao Te Ching, that makes it most interesting. Here Henry says “perhaps in opening the wound, my own wound, I closed other wounds, other people’s wounds.” In short, Henry discovers the reason for all his suffering: to give something back to the world.
NEXUS: Volume I. Obelisk Press, Paris, 1960; Grove Press, New York, 1965, 1987.
The last installment of Henry’s New York life. Again, the setting is Greenwich Village in the twenties and again the heroine/muse is Mona (who is betraying Henry with another woman). The marvels here are the digressions. They cover everything—from America, to philosophy, to writing, to memory. At the end of the book, Henry is launched from America to Europe. He says good-bye to Daniel Boone, the Street of Early Sorrows, Sherlock Holmes, Houdini, Oscar Hammerstein, O. Henry, P.T. Barnum, Jesse James, and Rudolf Friml.
Order and Chaos Chez Hans Reichel. Loujon Press, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1966.
A strange and beautiful essay about the origins of art. It is here that Henry describes his love affair with chaos, his desire to be as creative as God.
Quiet Days in Clichy. Olympia Press, Paris, 1956; Grove Press, New York, 1987.
Two erotic tales set in Paris in the thirties, written in 1940 for a collector of pornography who rejected them as “too poetic.” The price was supposedly “one dollar a page.” Even as a pornographer, Henry couldn’t hold a job. This book is rawer than Tropic of Cancer and doesn’t have as many digressions, but it is still not proper pornography, i.e., “the copulation of clichés” (Nabokov).
Insomnia or The Devil at Large. Loujon Press, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1970; Gemini Smith/Doubleday & Co., New York, 1974.
The story of an old man falling in love with a beautiful young woman, who taunts him and causes him to lose sleep. The devil here is love, longing, imagination, sleeplessness. This exquisite account of Henry’s infatuation with Hoki, his ultimate wife, is full of wisdom about the eternal riddle of unrequited passion. Illustrated with Henry’s “Insomnia” series of watercolors, which are among his best.
My Life and Times. Gemini Smith/Playboy Press, Chicago, 1971.
A large illustrated book containing photographs, watercolors, an autobiographical essay by Henry, an introduction by Bradley Smith, a chronology of Henry’s life made by himself. A typical Henry-mélange of wisdom and humbug. The recollections of childhood are valuable, but the pictures of Henry playing Ping-Pong with bosomy naked blondes did his reputation more harm than good.
The Nightmare Notebook. New Directions, New York, 1975.
Facsimile of Henry’s notebook during the tour of America with Abe Rattner that was the basis for The Air-Conditioned Nightmare. Fascinating descriptions of places, people, moods, as well as watercolors by Henry.
Book of Friends: A Tribute to the Friends of Long Ago. Capra Press, California, 1976.
An octogenarian Henry recalls the Brooklyn of his youth and the friends he made on the street. As Brooklyn recedes, it gets rosier and rosier. There is a wooliness to the writing here; it is not Henry’s best work. Useful for autobiographical background.
Sextet. Capra Press, California, 1977.
The short works collected here were first published separately by the Capra Press. They are: “On Turning Eighty,” “Reflections on the Death of Mishima,” “First Impressions of Greece,” “The Waters Reglitterized,” “Reflections on the Maurizius Case,” and “Mother, China and the World Beyond.” Another miscellany of works first published as pamphlets. In “Mother, China and the World Beyond,” Henry anticipates reunion with his mother in paradise and allows her a sweetness he has never recorded before. He seems to be preparing for his own death.
The World of Lawrence: A Passionate Appreciation. Capra Press, California, 1980.
Begun after Kahane’s acceptance of Tropic of Cancer in 1932, and worked on intermittently for the next twenty years at least, this study of D.H. Lawrence never really found a coherent form. It chases its tail—Henry in search of Lawrence, finding Henry—but is full of revealing insights into Miller’s patriarchal view of the universe, sex, death, creativity.
Opus Pistorum. Grove Press, New York, 1983.
(Republished in paperback as Under the Roofs of Paris, 1984.) Under any title, this pornography-for-hire experiment is horribly written and besmirches Henry’s reputation. Some have argued it is a forgery. Forgery or not, it exemplifies the way fame betrays the famous. At his best, Henry Miller understood that sex and spirit were very close. At his worst, he played right into the hands of his critics.
Paint As You Like and Die Happy: The Paintings of Henry Miller, ed. Noel Young. Chronicle Books, San Francisco, n.d. (circa 1990).
Illustrated volume of Henry’s watercolors from the thirties to the seventies. Also contains interesting prefaces by Noel Young and Lawrence Durrell. Reprints four Henry Miller essays on painting, including “To Paint Is to Love Again,” “The Painting Lesson,” and “The Waters Reglitterized.”
Crazy Cock. Grove Press, New York, 1991. Introductions by Mary Dearborn and Erica Jong.
An early effort at fiction from the twenties, abandoned after Henry found his voice in Tropic of Cancer. It is not very good, but should be extremely encouraging to young writers in that it makes one see how desperately far Miller’s early voice was from the voice he eventually found. Henry seemed to know that this book should be burned, but unfortunately he didn’t burn it. It was found at U.C.L.A. after his death. He apparently told many friends it had been lost. Wishful thinking.
PAMPHLETS, BROCHURES, SHORT WORKS
What Are You Going To Do About Alf? Privately printed, Paris, 1935; American edition: Bern Porter, California, 1944.
Miller’s first “open letter to all and sundry” to raise money for Perlès so that he can go on with his Paris life. Reprinted “not as an appeal for alms but as a good joke.” Henry was to make something of a specialty of these open letters—both for his friends and for himself. The first (Paris) edition of this pamphlet is the rarest of all Henry’s Paris works.
Aller retour New York. Obelisk Press/Editions du Chêne, Paris, 1935; Scorpion Press, England, 1959.
A very long letter to Alfred Perlès recounting Henry’s trip back to New York from Paris in the mid-thirties. Useful in demonstrating what New York meant to Henry, and in contrasting it with the freedom that he found in Paris.
An Open Letter to All and Sundry. Privately printed, Chicago, 1943.
An appeal for support in exchange for watercolors. Portions of this letter were later published in The New Republic where they had “a howling success” (in Henry’s words), even though the same magazine had just “printed a critical villification of me as a man and artist.”
Dear Friends …”. Privately printed, Big Sur, 1944.
An appeal for money so that Henry can continue his assault on literature. This was also placed in quarterlies. Henry requested $2,500 to enable him to write for a year. He was then at work on The Air-Conditioned Nightmare and The Rosy Crucifixion.
Murder the Murderer: An Excursus on War from The Air-Conditioned Nightmare. Berkeley/Big Sur; Porter/Miller, 1944
A diatribe against war published in 1944 was guaranteed to bring trouble. And it did. It was in 1944 that Miller was visited by the F.B.I. for having given a supposedly seditious speech at Dartmouth. This pamphlet was not widely distributed for political reasons and “Murder the Murderer” eventually appeared in Remember to Remember, 1947.
Semblance of a Devoted Past. Bern Porter, Berkeley, California, 1944.
Letters from Henry to Emil Schnellock, written in Paris and Corfu between 1930 and 1939. Illustrated with Miller watercolors, they are full of insights into the writing of Tropic of Cancer. These letters later appear in Letters to Emil, edited by George Wickes, New Directions, New York, 1989.
Sunday After the War. New Directions, Norfolk, Virginia, 1944.
A miscellany of earlier work.
The Angel Is My Watermark. Holve-Barrows, Fullerton, California, 1944.
The earliest version in book form of “An Open Letter to All and Sundry,” with seven watercolors by Miller. Also contains the essay “The Angel is My Watermark!” a description of the process of making a watercolor, with digressions about writing, Spinoza, Bosch, and Miller’s New York family.
The Plight of the Creative Artist in the United States of America. Bern Porter, Maine, 1944.
A collection of open letters including the famous “An Open Letter to All and Sundry.” The begging letter raised to an art form. Fund-raisers take note.
Varda, The Master Builder. Circle Editions, Berkeley, California, 1947.
Biographical essay about Jean Varda of Monterey, Henry’s artist friend. Later reprinted in Remember to Remember.
Echolalia: Reproductions of Water Colors. Bern Porter, Berkeley, California, 1945.
Henry Miller Miscellanea. Bern Porter, Berkeley, California, 1945.
Another anthology of early work.
Obscenity and the Law of Reflection. Alicat Book Shop, Yonkers, New York, 1945.
The use of obscenity to awaken the reader. Henry sees obscenity as a form of revelation.
Why Abstract? With Hilaire Hiler and William Saroyan. New Directions, New York, 1945.*
The Amazing and Invariable Beauford Delaney. Alicat Book Shop, Yonkers, New York, 1945
A biographical essay/story about the African-American artist Beauford Delaney. He was an artist in Africa, long before the white men began raiding that dark continent for slaves. Africa is the home of the artist, the one continent on this planet which is soul-possessed. But in white North America, where even the spirit has become bleached and blanched until it resembles asbestos, a born artist has to produce his credentials, has to prove that he’s not a hoax and a fraud, not a leper, not an enemy of society, especially not an enemy of our crazy society in which monuments are erected a hundred years too late. We discover that Henry was a multiculturalist before the term was invented. This essay/story appears also in Remember to Remember. It is a paean to blackness, which Henry equates with Buddhahood and enlightenment.
Maurizius Forever. Colt Press, California, 1946.
A review/essay of The Maurizius. Case by Jacob Wassermann, 1929. The piece begins as a review, but becomes a philosophical essay about war, human civilization, and the possibility of mankind’s reaching a new level of consciousness.
Men God Forgot by Albert Cossery. Gotham Book Mart, New York, 1946.
A book review by Henry, which originally appeared in Circle, a literary magazine.
Money and How It Gets That Way. Booster Publications, Paris, 1938
Henry’s philosophy of money, written in response to Ezra Pound’s. Pound wrote Henry after he read Tropic of Cancer and asked him to think about the meaning of money.
“The Pointilliste of Big Sur.” Raymond & Raymond, California, 1946.
Announcement of Emil White’s exhibition of paintings, with short text by Miller.
Of, By & About Henry Miller. Edited by Oscar Baradinsky. Alicat Bookshop, Yonkers, New York, 1947.
Contains the essays “Let Us Be Content With Three Little New-Born Elephants,” “The Novels of Albert Cossery, Another Bright Messenger,” and “Anderson the Storyteller.” Also contains articles on Miller by Herbert Read and others.
“I Defy You.” Henry Miller Literary Society, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1962.
An offprint from Playboy magazine in which Henry defies the Boston censors who banned Tropic of Cancer in 1962.
Journey to an Antique Land. Ben Ben Press, Big Sur, 1962. Privately printed.*
Just Wild about Harry: A Mel-Melo in Seven Scenes. New Directions, New York, 1963.
Henry’s only play, written in two days.
Henry Miller on Writing. Edited by Thomas H. Moore. New Directions, New York, 1964.
A compendium of excerpts from Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, Black Spring, Sexus, Nexus, Plexus, The Hamlet Letters, The Cosmological Eye, The World of Sexus, etc., which deal with the writing process and the supreme subject of writing—liberation. A wonderful book, showing the heart of Miller’s lifelong struggle to become a writer. Contains his commandments to himself, his daily program (1932–33) as well as his painting and reading agendas. Also contains the charts he made while writing Plexus. Fascinating, if you’ve ever wanted to write.
Face to Face with Henry Miller: Conversations with Georges Belmont. Sidgwick & Jackson, London, England, 1971; published as Henry Miller in Conversation, Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1972.
Interviews by Georges Belmont, originally made for French radio, ranging over such subjects as Henry’s life, the writing process, religion, etc.
Four Visions of America. With Kay Boyle, Erica Jong, and Thomas Sanchez. Capra Press, California, 1977.
Originally conceived as a series of essays about America in her bicentennial year. Henry’s “A Nation of Lunatics” takes off from a phrase of Whitman’s. It is a burning indictment of America in 1976. It shows that even at eighty-five, Henry had lost none of his iconoclastic fire. The present author’s essay is a meditation on living on two coasts; Kay Boyle’s is about the longing for “Report from Lock-Up,” and Thomas Sanchez’s is about the liberation of Wounded Knee. A passionate, four-handed critique of America at two hundred.
Gliding into the Everglades, and Other Essays. Lost Pleiade, Lake Oswego, Oregon, 1977.
Six brief essays on Japanese women, Picasso, Cabeza de Vaca, Marie Corelli, and Jack Nicholson, as well as the title piece, which deals with Miller’s trip to Florida in 1927–28 with Joe O’Regan and Emil Schnellock.
Love Between the Sexes. Greenwich Books, New York, 1978.
Miller pamphlet in which this stunning line appears: “At the root of all evil … is the innate Puritanism of the Americans. Though they boast of sexual freedom, they do not mature as other peoples….”
My Bike & Other Friends. Volume II of Book of Friends. Capra Press, California, 1978.
More recollections of Henry’s Brooklyn childhood, from the vantage point of his eighties.
Notes on Aaron’s Rod and Other Notes on Lawrence from the Paris Notebooks. Edited by Seamus Cooney. Black Sparrow Press, California, 1980.
“Lawrence is writing my story here,” says Henry of Aaron’s Rod.
O Lake of Light. Capra Press, California, 1981.
Sent as a Christmas card by the Capra Press, this is Miller’s only published poem.
Nothing but the Marvelous: The Wisdoms of Henry Miller. Edited by Blair Fielding. Capra Press, California, 1990.
Miscellany of inspiring Miller quotes.
The Paintings: A Centennial Retrospective. Coast Publishing, Carmel, California, 1991.
Catalogue of posthumous watercolor exhibition. The owners of the paintings recall Henry and how and where the watercolors were made. Some of them are of his third wife, Lepska.
LETTERS
The Red Notebook. JONATHAN Williams, Highlands, North Carolina, 1958.
A reproduction of one of Henry Miller’s notebooks, including random notes and drawings. Shows the play of Miller’s mind.
The Story of George Dibbern’s Quest. Privately printed, Big Sur, 1958.
A broadside reprint review of Quest and an appeal for money to support the aging Dibbern.
Defence of the Freedom to Read. J.W. Cappelens Forlag, Oslo, 1959.
When Sexus was banned in Norway and two booksellers were convicted for selling obscenity, Henry wrote two letters to Trygve Hirsh, the defending attorney, explaining how “censorship works like a boomerang,” always stimulating rather than discouraging the public from tracking down banned books. Henry declares himself as being opposed to judgment, condemnation, and slaughter. He equates the censor with the murderer, and says that it is the censor who is immoral: “How can one guard against evil, in short, if one does not know what evil is?”
“Reunion in Barcelona; A Letter to Alfred Perlès,” from “Aller retour New York.” Scorpion Press, England, 1959.
See p. 321.
To Paint Is to Love Again. Cambria Books, CA, 1960.
This material also appears in Semblance of a Devoted Past. See p. 322.
Art and Outrage: Lawrence Durrell and Alfred Perlès. Dutton, New York, 1961.
A selection of letters between Miller, Durrell, and Perlès.
Stand Still Like the Hummingbird. New Directions, New York, 1962.
Reprint of earlier pieces, including Miller’s essay on Walt Whitman.
Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller: A Private Correspondence. Edited by George Wickes. Dutton, New York, 1964.
Letters chronicling the friendship of Miller and Durrell, 1935–1959.
Miller, Henry and Nin, Anaïs. Letters to Anaïs Nin/Henry Miller. Edited and introduced by Gunther Stuhlmann. Putnam, New York, 1965.
A partial record of the Nin/Miller relationship, published when both were alive. More revelations were to come later.
Collector’s Quest: The Correspondence of Henry Miller and J. Rives Childs, 1947–1965. Edited by Richard Clement Wood. University Press of Virginia/Randolf-Macon College, Charlottesville-Ashland, 1968.
Miller, Henry, and Gordon, William A. Writer & Critic: A Correspondence with Henry Miller. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 1968.
Miller arguing with a critic who is writing a book he hates.
This Is Henry, Henry Miller from Brooklyn. Nash publishing, Los Angeles, 1974.
Dialogues between Henry and Robert Snyder, the filmmaker who created The Henry Miller Odyssey, a most revealing and intelligent documentary about Henry. This book is a companion piece to the film, which is available from Master Works Video, 15313 Whitfield Avenue, Pacific Palisades, CA. 90272.
Miller, Henry, and Fowlie, Wallace. Letters of Henry Miller and Wallace Fowlie, 1943–1972. Introduction by Wallace Fowlie. Grove Press, New York, 1975.
A fascinating correspondence between Miller and the Yale professor and critic. Sheds light on Miller’s life and philosophical preoccupations.
“An Open Letter to Stroker.” One Nine Two Seven Press/Stroker, New York, 1978.
Inspired by the writings and art work of Tommy Trantino, a prisoner in Trenton State Prison, New Jersey, this is a correspondence between Henry and Irving Stettner, a fan who wrote to him late in his life. It later appeared in From Your Capricorn Friend. See below.
Henry Miller: Years of Trial and Triumph, 1962–1964: The correspondence of Henry Miller and Elmer Gertz. Edited by Elmer Gertz and Felice Flanery Lewis. Southern Illinois University Press, 1978.
Miller’s correspondence with one of the attorneys who defended him against charges of obscenity.
The Theatre & Other Pieces. Stroker, New York, 1979.*
Reflections. Edited by Twinka Thiebaud. Borgo Press, California, 1981; Capra Press, California, 1981.
Twinka Thiebaud, who took care of Henry when I knew him, recorded many of Henry’s dinner-table pronouncements on women, erotica, feminism, Emma Goldman, spiritualism, death, Nin, Gurdjieff, Mailer, Chaplin, Whitman, etc. If you couldn’t be Henry’s guest, this is the next best thing.
From Your Capricorn Friend: Henry Miller and the Stroker, 1978–1980. New Directions, New York, 1984.
An exchange of letters between Irving Stettner (a.k.a. The Stroker) and Henry. Amusing letters from Henry’s eighties, with comments on Isaac Bashevis Singer, Warren Beatty, morning erections, and memories of childhood.
Letters from Henry Miller to Hoki Tokuda Miller. Edited by Joyce Howard Miller. Freundlich Books, New York, 1986.
Correspondence between Henry and his last wife.
Miller, Henry, and Nin, Anaïs, A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller, 1932–1953. Edited and with an introduction by Gunther Stuhlmann. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1987.
After Anaïs, Henry, and Henry’s husband had died, a more complete selection of letters appeared. Essential reading for an understanding of the Miller/Nin relationship.
Dear, Dear Brenda: The Love Letters of Henry Miller to Brenda Venus. Text by Brenda Venus, edited by Gerald Seth Sindell. H. Holt, New York, 1987.
Late in life Henry fell in love with actress Brenda Venus, an affair of the heart that kept him going. The relationship, as usual, took place mostly in Henry’s mind—but this was also true when he was young. Reading these letters, one feels that he fell in love with the name “Venus” as much as anything!
“Dear Bernie Wolfe.” Privately printed, n.d. (Probably 1948.)
The text of a letter from Miller to Bernard Wolfe concerning Really the Blues, a book by Wolfe and Milton Mezzrow.
Miller, Henry, and Schnellock, Emil. Letters to Emil. Edited by George Wickes. New Directions, New York, 1989.
Essential letters describing Henry’s first years in Paris, when he was abandoning Crazy Cock and beginning Tropic of Cancer. In these exchanges we hear and see “the raw, living imprint of my Paris life.” Shows the transition from the turgid style of Crazy Cockto the fearless fuck-every-thingness of Tropic of Cancer.
*Fugitive Miller publications.
Background Reading
MOST USEFUL WORKS FOR understanding Henry’s life and times.
Brassaï. Henry Miller: Grandeur Nature. Gallimard, Paris, 1975.
——. The Secret Paris of the Thirties. Pantheon Books, New York, 1976.Charney, Maurice. Sexual Fiction. Methuen, London and New York, 1981.
de Grazia, Edward. Girls Lean Back Everywhere. Random House, New York 1992.
Dearborn, Mary. The Happiest Man Alive. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1991.
Dick, Kenneth C. Henry Miller: Colossus of One. Alberts-Sittard, 1967.
Dworkin, Andrea. Woman Hating. E.P. Dutton & Co., New York, 1974.
——. Intercourse. Free Press/Macmillan, New York, 1987.
——. Letters from a War Zone. Seeker & Warburg, New York, 1987.
——. Mercy. Four Walls, Eight Windows, New York, 1991.
——, and MacKinnon, Catharine A. Pornography and Civil Rights. Organizing Against Pornography, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1988.
Ferguson, Robert. Henry Miller: A Life. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1991.
Girodias, Maurice. The Frog Prince. Crown Publishers, New York, 1980.
Goldman, Emma. Living My Life. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1931.
Gottesman, Ronald, ed. Critical Essays on Henry Miller. G.K. Hall & Co., New York, 1992.
Griffin, Susan. Pornography and Silence. Harper & Row, New York, 1981.
Hutchinson, E.R. Tropic of Cancer on Trial. Grove Press, New York, 1968.
Kluver, Billy and Julie Martin. Kiki’s Paris: Artists and Lovers 1900–1930. Abrams, New York, 1989.
MacNiven, Ian S., ed. The Durrell-Miller Letters, 1935–80. New Directions, New York, 1988.
McAlmon, Robert and Boyle, Kay. Being Geniuses Together. North Point Press, Berkeley, California, 1984.
Mailer, Norman. “Henry Miller, Genius and Lust, Narcissism.” In American Review. No. 24, 1976.
Martin, Jay. Always Merry and Bright. Capra Press, Berkeley, California, 1978.
Millett, Kate. Sexual Politics. Doubleday & Company, Inc., New York, 1970.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. Vintage Books, New York, 1989.
Nin, Anaïs. Henry and June. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1986.
——. Incest: From “A Journal of Love.” Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1992.Orwell, George. An Age Like This, 1920-1940. Vol. 1. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1968.
Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 1990.
——. Sex, Art and American Culture. Vintage Books, New York, 1991.
Perlès, Alfred. My Friend Henry Miller. John Day Company, New York, 1956.
Porter, Bern, ed. The Happy Rock: A Book About Henry Miller. Bern Porter, Berkeley, California, 1945.
Stoltenberg, John. Refusing To Be a Man. Breitenbush Books, Inc., Portland, Oregon, 1989.
Vidal, Gore. “The Sexus of Henry Miller.” Book Week, August 1, 1965.
——. “Pen Pals: Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell.” Times Literary Supplement (London), Sept. 9–15, 1988.Wiser, William. The Crazy Years. Thames and Hudson, New York, 1985.