Henry Miller's unique handwritten books for friends
It was my pleasure to write several little books in this manner, for my intimate friends, during the last few years of my stay in Paris. […] Because they were written with the pen, and not on the typewriter, they all have a direct, intimate quality. They were done in my spare time, usually in the course of a few weeks.
HENRY MILLER, The Waters Reglitterized, 1949
He writes little books by hand, like my diaries, for Emil, Durrell, Edgar and me. Each one on the theme that links them. […] Henry illustrates these books with small watercolors. They are delightful, personal, enchanting. A delicate Chinese Henry working these “orfèvrerie” of friendship with playful spirit. Durrell’s is a riotous fancy on words and rare expressions. Mine is about writing.
ANAÏS NIN, March 1939, Diary 60, Anaïs Nin Papers
Department of Special Collections, UCLA
Henry Miller handwrote and illustrated a series of six “long intimate book letter[s]”in printer’s dummies between 1937 and 1940 as gifts for his friends. …. Writing these books had confirmed for Miller that literary creation could serve as a “reminder of a more perfect state, of a union or unity which is ineffable and undescribable”. But the creative process could not restore the writer to this theorized state of wholeness. The solution, Miller concluded, lay elsewhere: not in writing, but in experience.
MICHAEL PADUANO from introduction to The Heaven Beyond Heaven
'The Lost Book' by Henry Miller
Sublunary Editions has published The Book of Conversations with David Edgar in both a paperback with full-color reproductions of the watercolors included in the manuscript, and as well as a limited edition hardbound.
It was unaccounted for, unpublished and privately held until recently, when it came into the possession of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature at the New York Public Library.
The Book of Conversations with David Edgar was edited by Miller scholar Michael Paduano.