HENRY MILLER - AUTOGRAPH NOTE SIGNED 08/30/1978 - HFSID 32510

HENRY MILLER
The author sends an autograph note on the verso of a postcard about receiving the books
Autograph Note Signed: "Henry Miller" on verso of postcard. Color, 4¼x6. Marina Del Rey, California, 1978 August 30. Addressed by Miller to: "Mr. V.E. Moody, 1926 So. Roan St., Johnson City, Tenn. (37601)". Begins: "Dear Vearl Moody". In full: "Books came today. Will sign & return soon. What ever happened about your talk at Rotary Show?" Coast Galleries postcard, captioned on verso: "Childish Dream/by Henry Miller/Lithograph, 1973. Edition 200." Miller once said, "Children's paintings never fail to fascinate us...because they are honest, usually filled with that marvelous passion that is inspired from their direct and spontaneous way of painting." Attempting to capture that spirit in his own artwork, Miller told a friend that if he could paint as well as a child he would regard himself as successful "and to hell with the rest of everything else." During the mid-1970s, Japanese art publisher Sadajiro Kubo produced 23 of Miller's stone-plate lithographs (including Childish Dream), nine etchings and four serigraphs. The works came to be known as the Kubo Collection. American author Henry Miller (1891-1980) is best known for his controversial 1934 novel, Tropic of Cancer, which along with Tropic of Capricorn, chronicled Miller's life as an expatriate in Paris (1930-1939). First published in France, the works resulted in a 30-year censorship debate in the U.S., which Miller finally won. While in Paris, Miller, the author of more than 36 works, became involved with married author Anais Nin. Ironically, it was Nin, not Miller who documented their romance, which inspired the 1992 film, Henry and June (June Edith Smith Mansfield, a former taxi driver and the second of Miller's five wives, and also had an affair with Nin). At the time he wrote this autograph, Miller, who had helped to establish Big Sur as an artist's colony when he lived there from 1944-1963, was living in Pacific Palisades, California, where he died on June 7, 1980. Slightly soiled at blank areas. Postmark slightly smudged. Fine condition.