Selected Prose

A two-volume project

MacGibbon & Kee published Selected Prose in London in 1965 as two volumes. The Morgan Library catalogues both volumes together. The Roman numerals identify portions of that selection, not successive novels or volumes of The Rosy Crucifixion.

The first volume’s publisher’s description emphasizes shorter biographical, critical, and recollective pieces alongside Miller’s better-known achievement in novels and travel writing. The set broadens the view of a writer too often represented by a few controversial titles.

Essays with different kinds of work to do

Scholarly references locate such pieces as Good News! God Is Love! and When I Reach for My Revolver in the first volume. They also cite Murder the Murderer and artist-related writing in the second. These examples establish the selection’s range without supplying an unverified complete contents list.

The differences are substantial. An antiwar polemic asks readers to follow and challenge an argument; an artist portrait depends on an encounter and the writer’s evaluation of a person. Gathering them together highlights Miller’s voice across forms without making the pieces share a single plot.

Harold T. McCarthy quotes a revealing image from A Bodhisattva Artist: the European artist belongs to an old oak that has survived repeated storms. Miller concedes that earning a living can be harder there; the tree supplies a sense of belonging, not a guarantee of income. Even its strength is conditional, since the artist falls if the whole tree falls. This image complicates the familiar picture of Miller’s solitary rebel. Here artistic independence needs a shared history that can sustain it, though that history remains vulnerable. It is Miller’s idealized contrast, not a description of every European artist’s circumstances.

What the edition preserves—and what it does not

The 1965 set captures a particular stage in Miller’s publication history. It cannot include the many late chapbooks and posthumously published manuscripts that appeared afterward. Selected does not mean complete, and the date is part of the selection’s meaning.

The set is also distinct from The Henry Miller Reader, published in Britain as The Best of Henry Miller. That alternate title belongs to the Reader’s history; it is not an alias for every volume of selected Miller prose. Readers comparing editions should match publisher, date, volume number, and contents rather than relying on the word selected alone.