PBA Galleries

A large archive from the publisher's files. Includes more than one hundred autograph and typed letters, signed, from Henry Miller to publisher Bradley Smith, most on Miller's Pacific Palisades stationery. Most one page, a few longer. Largely discussing professional matters but with no shortage of personal detail included. Also a large file of retained carbon copies of letters from Bradley Smith to Henry Miller along with copies of correspondence to Miller from others received by Smith as publisher. The publisher's file for Miller's "My Life and Times" containing chapter typescripts heavily corrected and annotated by Miller and approximately twenty pages of manuscript notes by Miller. A file box containing approximately 200 photographs used to illustrate "My Life and Times," filed individually by page placement, many with negatives, slides, or transparencies. A binder containing approximately 300 color slides of photographs by Bradley Smith of Miller, his associates, his Pacific Palisades home, his artwork, etc. Approximately 75 color transparencies of photographs of watercolor paintings by Miller; approximately 15 transparencies of Miller in his Pacific Palisades home with a nude woman (Candice Thayer) from a shoot for Playboy Magazine. Several files for the Gemini-Smith Edition of Miller's "Insomnia, or The Devil at Large" including photographic positives of both the French and English facsimile text, a mock-up of a French edition, designs for the dust jacket, a copy of the Japanese edition of Insomnia, A printing plate with a large facsimile of Miller's autograph, in reverse. Plus some additional related material.

A fascinating and revealing archive of the collaborative efforts of Henry Miller and Bradley Smith in the publication of Miller's autobiography and the reprinting of Miller's Insomnia, originally published in a limited edition by the Loujon Press. Much deserving of further scholarship. Bradley Smith was one of the central figures in the founding of American Society of Media Photographers and the author of some 23 books, including the popular “A History in Art” series, he also wrote on photography and eroticism in addition to editing and illustrating Miller's autobiography.