Henry Miller (1891-1980) - photo 1
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Henry Miller (1891-1980)

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£ 882
Auction dateClassic
15.12.2023 11:00UTC +01:00
Auctioneer
CHRISTIE'S
Event location
United Kingdom, London
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ID 1108936
Lot 137 | Henry Miller (1891-1980)
Henry Miller (1891-1980)
Twelve letters signed (‘Henry Miller’ or ‘Henry V. Miller’), to Madeline Boyd and Clara Urquhart, Paris and Big Sur, 12 December 1931 to 11 September 1950
21 pages in total, various sizes, handwritten with the exception of one typed, some on illustrated paper, with two carbon copies of Boyd’s replies. Provenance: Sotheby's New York, 6 May 1981, lot 79, and Sotheby's, 17 December 1981, lot 246.

‘My stuff is too frank, too obscene perhaps’: Letters concerning his reception in America, thoughts on current world problems in the aftermath of the war, and his present life and work. Miller responds to a questionnaire he had been asked to complete by Boyd, his literary agent: ‘Frankly…I do not think it lies within the province of writers or thinkers to bring about immediate and drastic changes, of the sort one wants, by fresh examination of problems. Fundamentally, all these questions have been answered ages ago – by men of wisdom, by prophets, by great religious teachers’. He continues: ‘Is not the solution the very obvious and the very simple one which we are constantly evading, all of us? The simple and yet most difficult matter of squaring action with belief?’. He affirms his thinking that to live in peace, individuals must realise that they alone are responsible for their fate: ‘In short…men are moved more by example than by discussion. Jesus did not write a line’. Complaining also of debt, he expresses a desire to find a collector who will take his paintings, and asks Boyd to find him books on Gilles de Rais and Saladin.

To Urquhart, Miller writes asking for her to return some works of his that she has been trying to sell in New York. Writing ‘a little under the influence of Pernod’, he discusses his reception in America alongside his future hopes. Concerning his new book Tropic of Cancer, he praises the freedom he has found in Europe: ‘I have discovered a medium in which to express myself sincerely and it doesn’t matter to me at all if I have only a limited audience. I have started a book which will require volumes to complete and in it I am myself – and nothing but. You can understand, therefore, how happy I am, and how little it matters that America refused me…I have put everything into my book – and it is rich. It is somewhere between Rabelais and Dostoievski’.
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
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09.12.2023 12:00 – 17:00
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11.12.2023 09:00 – 20:00
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