Miller, Henry

Henry Miller Miscellanea

Berkeley, CA: Bern Porter, 1945. Limited First Edition. Hardcover. With inserted postcard declared as hand-written by Henry Miller; & signed by publisher Bern Porter. "Every five hundred years, according to Egyptian mythology, a sacred bird like an eagle with red and golden plumage, came out of Arabia to Heliopolis where it burned itself on the altar and rose again from its ashes, young and beautiful. Out of the squalor and poverty of the Bowery has sprung, from a little leather chest, a nobly proportioned vault which threatens to endure. Every New Yorker, as well as the footloose "Hinterland Jake," should take a holiday and visit Pershing Square." ("A Bowery Phoenix," first paragraph, pg. 11). A vintage volume of miscellanea by Henry Miller (1891-1980), the great American author & artist whose earlier works were an influence & precursor-inspiration for the Beat Generation. As noted by the publisher on leaf between title & contents pages, these miscellaneous writings & several artwork reproductions (at front cover & interior) were "...assembled and published to aid biographers of Henry Miller, to foster greater interest among the collectors of his work and to raise funds for the publication of his many manuscripts." A beautiful production, small-format hardcover in illustrated boards, one of 500 copies signed by the publisher at statement quoted above, & with a postcard (supposedly, see below) hand-written by Miller to Porter inserted at leaf preceding colophon, which indicates that this is hand-numbered copy No. 268/500. With all points in Shifreen & Jackson, A41(a), pgs. 160-161, with the exception of "Clear wax paper wrapper" which is not present- of course, we have provided our own clear protective jacket. S&J states: "A cancelled postcard written in Miller's hand has been inserted into a slit on page [43]. Most copies seen found the postcards written to Bern Porter but on one occasion, was addressed to Hunting Cairns. Due to the slow sales of this book and the inconvenience of writing and mailing out a contrived number of postcards, the expected 500 postcards for this edition were not written by Miller, and an unknown number of these books were remaindered without postcards." (pg.161) We dare not remove this postcard from its slip, but are able to determine that it was addressed to Porter, & appears to our eyes as the characteristic holography of Miller in green ink- whether it is genuinely written by Miller or one of the (apparently very well-executed) imitations by another hand after Miller got tired of writing them, we cannot be certain- but again, it is our educated guess that this is, as declared at slit, "An/ Original Holograph/ by Henry Miller." We note that Bern Porter, publisher & signatory here, was quite an interesting figure in his own right- a long-time friend & supporter of Miller as demonstrated in this edition, Porter (1911-2004) was an astounding American polymath who wrote, published, performed, was an avant-garde pioneer of Mail Art & Found Poetry, & even a physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project which led to the first atomic weapons during World War II. From the collection of Dr. Stanley Hurwick Levy (1926-2020), an esteemed American physician who met & conferred with Albert Einstein (as did Porter) while a student prodigy at Princeton University during the 1940s, & was among the most prolific book collectors of them all, over many years. An especially rich & rewarding (albeit slim) Miller collectible in its most extremely rare contemporary form, with distinguished provenance- an essential gem for the serious Miller collector. In relatively quite fine-verging-on-very-fine condition with light rubbing, mild-to-moderate browning & spotting chiefly to blank margins of cover boards & spine; a touch of wear & some tiny bumps, creases at edges & corners of same; mild browning, spotting to edges of text block (upper edge trimmed, side & lower edges untrimmed as issued). Interior very fine with only light browning at blank paste-downs, endpapers & page leaves (the latter chiefly at blank thin margins/edges). Postcard appears substantially pristine, on off-white card stock which may be very slightly browned. Fine- Very Fine. [Item #6419]

Price: $350.00