Most Popular Books by Henry Miller

“A brilliant selection . . . it is in short a voyage of discovery, an adventure and this the log of that voyage in the life of a probing and powerful writer.” —Robert R. Kirsch, Los Angeles Times Some of the most rewarding pages in Henry Miller''s books concern his self-education as a writer. He tells, as few great writers ever have, how he set his goals, how he discovered the excitement of using words, how the books he read influenced him, and how he learned to draw on his own experience.

The account of a young writer and his friends in free-wheeling Paris.

Henry Miller called The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder his "most singular story."

A collection of works spanning the entire career of great 20th-century American writer Henry Miller, edited and introduced by Lawrence Durrell. In 1958, when Henry Miller was elected to membership in the American Institute of Arts and Letters, the citation described him as: "The veteran author of many books whose originality and richness of technique are matched by the variety and daring of his subject matter. His boldness of approach and intense curiosity concerning man and nature are unequalled in the prose literature of our times." It is most fitting that this anthology of "the best" of Henry Miller should have been assembled by one of the first among Miller’s contemporaries to recognize his genius, the eminent British writer Lawrence Durrell. Drawing material from a dozen different books Durrell has traced the main line and principal themes of the "single, endless autobiography" which is Henry Miller’s life work. "I suspect," writes Durrell in his Introduction, "that Miller’s 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." Earlier, H. L. Mencken had said, "his is one of the most beautiful prose styles today," and the late Sir Herbert Read had written that "what makes Miller distinctive among modern writers is his ability to combine, without confusion, the aesthetic and prophetic functions." Included are stories, "portraits" of persons and places, philosophical essays, and aphorisms. For each selection Miller himself prepared a brief commentary which fits the piece into its place in his life story. This framework is supplemented by a chronology from Miller’s birth in 1891 up to the spring of 1959, a bibliography, and, as an appendix, an open letter to the Supreme Court of Norway written in protest of the ban on Sexus, a part of which appears in this volume.

An essential collection of writings, bursting with Henry Miller’s exhilarating candor and wisdom In this selection of stories and essays, Henry Miller elucidates, revels, and soars, showing his command over a wide range of moods, styles, and subject matters. Writing “from the heart,” always with a refreshing lack of reticence, Miller involves the reader directly in his thoughts and feelings. “His real aim,” Karl Shapiro has written, “is to find the living core of our world whenever it survives and in whatever manifestation, in art, in literature, in human behavior itself. It is then that he sings, praises, and shouts at the top of his lungs with the uncontainable hilarity he is famous for.” Here are some of Henry Miller’s best-known writings: an essay on the photographer Brassai; “Reflections on Writing,” in which Miller examines his own position as a writer; “Seraphita” and “Balzac and His Double,” on the works of other writers; and “The Alcoholic Veteran,” “Creative Death,” “The Enormous Womb,” and “The Philosopher Who Philosophizes.”

This collection, first published by New Directions in 1939, contains a number of Henry Miller''s most important shorter prose writings. They are taken from the Paris books Black Spring (1936) and Max and the White Phagocytes (1938) and were for the most part, written at about the satire time as Tropic of Capricorn—the period of Miller’s and Durrell’s life in the famous Villa Seurat in Paris. As is usual with Miller, these pieces cannot be tagged with the label of any given literary category. The unforgettable portrait of Max, the Paris drifter, and the probably-autobiographical Tailor Shop, are basically short stories, but even here the irrepressible vitality of Miller’s personality keeps breaking into the narrative. And in the critical and philosophical essays, the prose poems and surrealist fantasies, the travel sketches and scenarios, Miller’s passion for fiction, for telling the endless story of his extraordinary life, cannot be held down. Life, as no other modern author has lived it or can write it, bursts from these pages—the life of the mind and the body; of people, places and things; of ideas and the imagination.

The author''s quest for spiritual renewal is illuminated in descriptions of his impressions of Greece and its people.

A handsome, slip-cased, two-volume edition is printed in commemoration of thereigning achievements of this singular American writer.

Aller Retour New York is truly vintage Henry Miller, written during his most creative period, between Tropic of Cancer (1934) and Tropic of Capricorn (1939). Miller always said that his best writing was in his letters, and this unbuttoned missive to his friend Alfred Perlès is not only his longest (nearly 80 pages!) but his best--an exuberant, rambling, episodic, humorous account of his visit to New York in 1935 and return to Europe aboard a Dutch ship. Despite its high repute among Miller devotees, Aller Retour New York has never been easy to find. It was first brought out in Paris in 1935 in a limited edition, and a second edition, "Printed for Private Circulation Only," was issued in the United States ten years later. It is now available in paperback as a Revived Modern Classic, with an introduction by George Wickes that illuminates the people and personal circumstances which inform Aller Retour New York.

Nothing But The Marvelous (Expanded) Wisdoms of Henry Miller Henry Miller and Blair Fielding (editor) A gathering of Henry Miller''s insights-memorable and revealing, profound and profane, angry and joyous, poetic and philosophical-covering a multitude of subjects, from "Aging" to "Universal Law." Drawn from the full scope of Miller''s writings-the early, notorious "Tropic of Cancer, to "Book of Friends and "The Hamlet Letters.

Henry Miller''s letters to Emil contain a compelling record of this writer in the making, beginning with his first efforts in 1922, tracing his ten-year struggle to find his own voice, and reaching a climax with the publication of ''Tropic of Cancer'' in 1934. This one-sided correspondence was often quarried for publication, and has never appeared in print until now.

Autobiografische roman over het leven van de schrijver in de jaren rond 1930.

In 1941, Henry Miller, the author of Tropic of Cancer, was commissioned by a Los Angeles bookseller to write an erotic novel for a dollar a page. Under the Roofs of Paris (originally published as Opus Pistorum) is that book. Here one finds Miller’s characteristic candor, wit, self-mockery, and celebration of the good life. From Marcelle to Tania, to Alexandra, to Anna, and from the Left Bank to Pigalle, Miller sweeps us up in his odyssey in search of the perfect job, the perfect woman, and the perfect experience.

In this unique work, Henry Miller gives an utterly candid and self-revealing account of the reading he did during his formative years. Some writers attempt to conceal the literary influences which have shaped their thinking––but not Henry Miller. In The Books in My Life he shares the thrills of discovery that many kinds of books have brought to a keenly curious and questioning mind. Some of Miller’s favorite writers are the giants whom most of us revere––authors such as Dostoeyvsky, Boccaccio, Walt Whitman, James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Lao-Tse. To them he brings fresh and penetrating insights. But many are lesser-known figures: Krishnamurti, the prophet-sage; the French contemporaries Blaise Cendrars and Jean Giono; Richard Jeffries, who wrote The Story of My Heart; the Welshman John Cowper Powys; and scores of others. The Books in My Life contains some fine autobiographical chapters, too. Miller describes his boyhood in Brooklyn, when he devoured the historical stories of G. A. Henty and the romances of Rider Haggard. He tells of the men and women whom he regards as "living books": Lou Jacobs, W. E. B. DuBois, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and others. He offers his reminiscences of the New York Theatre in the early 1900’s––including plays such as Alias Jimmy Valentine and Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model. And finally, in Miller’s best vein of humor, he provides a satiric chapter on bathroom reading. In an appendix, Miller lists the hundred books that have influenced him most.

A “lyrical, impassioned” document of the intimate relationship between the two authors that was first disclosed in Henry and June (Booklist). This exchange of letters between the two controversial writers—Anaïs Nin, renowned for her candid and personal diaries, and Henry Miller, author of Tropic of Cancer—paints a portrait of more than two decades in their complex relationship as it moves through periods of passion, friendship, estrangement, and reconciliation. “The letters may disturb some with their intimacy, but they will impress others with their fragrant expression of devotion to art.” —Booklist “A portrait of Miller and Nin more rounded than any previously provided by critics, friends, and biographers.” —Chicago Tribune Edited and with an introduction by Gunther Stuhlmann

In celebration of the centennial of his birth, Into the Heart of Life: Henry Miller at One Hundred gathers a captivating selection of writings from ten of his books. The delights of his prose are many, not the least of which is Miller''s comic irony, which as The London Times noted, can be "as stringent and urgent as Swift''s." Frederick Turner has organized the whole to highlight the autobiographical chronology of Miller''s life, and along the way places the author squarely where he belongs––in the great tradition of American radical individualism, as a child of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman. Miller, who joyously declared "I am interested––like God––only in the individual," would have been pleased. The keynotes here are self-liberation and the pleasures of Miller''s "knotty, cross-grained" genius, as Turner describes it––"defying classification, ultimately unamenable to any vision, any program not [his] own." Or, as Henry Miller himself put it: "I am the hero and the book is myself."

Book is largely a commentary by Henry Miller on Bob Nash''s work.

One of Henry Miller''s most luminous statements of his personal philosophy of life, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird, provides a symbolic title for this collection of stories and essays. Many of them have appeared only in foreign magazines while others were printed in small limited editions which have gone out of print. Miller''s genius for comedy is at its best in "Money and How It Gets That Way"--a tongue-in-cheek parody of "economics" provoked by a postcard from Ezra Pound which asked if he "ever thought about money." His deep concern for the role of the artist in society appears in "An Open Letter to All and Sundry," and in "The Angel is My Watermark" he writes of his own passionate love affair with painting. "The Immorality of Morality" is an eloquent discussion of censorship. Some of the stories, such as "First Love," are autobiographical, and there are portraits of friends, such as "Patchen: Man of Anger and Light," and essays on other writers such as Walt Whitman, Thoreau, Sherwood Anderson and Ionesco. Taken together, these highly readable pieces reflect the incredible vitality and variety of interests of the writer who extended the frontiers of modern literature with Tropic of Cancer and other great books.

Exposing the underbelly of Paris and its world of sex, prostitutes and destitution. This groundbreaking narrative, has outlived its contemporary accusations of obscenity, demonstrating that stylistically and socially Henry Miller was ahead of his time.

The story of Miller''s bizarre second marriage and its development into an extraordinary and legendary ménage à trois - the final installment of the ''Rosy Curifixion'' trilogy. ''Goodbye, dear Pocohantas! Goodbye, P.T. Barnum! Goodbye, Street of Early Sorrows and may I never set eyes on you again!'' When Henry Miller left America for Paris in the 1930s to lead the life of a literary bohemian, he called this death of his former existence and his resurrection as a writer a ''rosy crucifixion''. This dramatic transformation provided the leitmotif for some of Miller''s finest writing, embodying everything he felt about self-liberation and the true life of the spirit. ''Nexus'', the final volume in the ''Rosy Crucifixion'' trilogy, is a fictionalised account of his last, tempestuous few months in New York. Trapped in a bizarre ménage à trois with his volatile actress wife, Mona, and her eccentric lover, Stasia, Miller''s life descends into violent and passionate anarchy. Demoralised, exhausted and finally abandoned by the cunning and disloyal Mona, he sails for Paris.

Presents the best of Miller''s contributions to Stroker magazine, which included prose, letters, and drawings ranging in subject matter from his daily activities to Isaac Bashevis Singer''s Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

In his great triptych "The Millennium," Bosch used oranges and other fruits to symbolize the delights of Paradise. In his great triptych “The Millennium,” Bosch used oranges and other fruits to symbolize the delights of Paradise. Whence Henry Miller’s title for this, one of his most appealing books; first published in 1957, it tells the story of Miller’s life on the Big Sur, a section of the California coast where he lived for fifteen years. Big Sur is the portrait of a place—one of the most colorful in the United States—and of the extraordinary people Miller knew there: writers (and writers who did not write), mystics seeking truth in meditation (and the not-so-saintly looking for sex-cults or celebrity), sophisticated children and adult innocents; geniuses, cranks and the unclassifiable, like Conrad Moricand, the “Devil in Paradise” who is one of Miller’s greatest character studies. Henry Miller writes with a buoyancy and brimming energy that are infectious. He has a fine touch for comedy. But this is also a serious book—the testament of a free spirit who has broken through the restraints and clichés of modern life to find within himself his own kind of paradise.