George Wickes – författare

Ever mercurial in temperament, an idealist who struggled financially to meet his material needs, Henry Miller for decades relied on his publisher James Laughlin's generosity and expert editorial advice. Although Miller's letters decried the conservatism of American book publishing and were often suspicious in tone, Miller nevertheless admired and trusted Laughlin with intimate details about his work and his personal life. The resulting correspondence, spanning from 1935 to 1979, shortly before Miller's death on June 7, 1980, is a remarkable, uncensored record of the ideas and intentions behind many of the author's most provocative literary endeavors.

Prepared by Henry Miller for publication in 1938, Letters to Emil––correspondence from 1921 through 1934 with his boyhood friend and successful artist Emil Schnellock––remained unpublished until 1989. A chance encounter by the two men, out of touch since childhood, led to Miller’s decision to become a writer. Throughout the ’20s and into the ’30s, Schnellock acted as his chief mentor, to whom he voiced his exuberant, sometimes cranky views of life and anxiously discussed his dying marriage to June Mansfield and his growing involvement with Anaïs Nin. Miller’s letters are a compelling record of the 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. Indeed, it was in his actual letters to Emil that Henry Miller developed his vigorously earthy yet philosophical style.

Henry Miller - American Writers 56 was first published in 1966. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.