The Books in My Life
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Books in My Life, New York: New Directions, 1952 is a book by Henry Miller.
Excerpt from the preface
- who are the writers who arc still regarded as *' obscene " ? How widely are their books circulated and where chiefly ? In what languages ? I can think of only three great writers whose works are still banned in England and America, and then only certain of their works, not all. I mean the Marquis de Sade (whose most sensational work is still banned in France), Aretino and D. H. Lawrence. What of Restif de la Bretonne, concerning whom an American, J. Rives Childs, has compiled (in French) a formidable tome of "Témoignages et jugements" ? And what about that first pornographic novel in the English language. The Memoirs of Fanny Hill ? Why, if it is so " dull," has it not become a ** classic " by now, free to circulate in drug stores, railway stations and other innocent places ? It is just two hundred years since it first appeared, and it has never gone out of print, as every American tourist in Paris well knows.
- Curious, but of all the books I was searching for while writing this first volume, the two I wanted most have not turned up : The Thirteen Crucified Saviours, by Sir Godfrey Higgins, author of the celebrated Anacalypsis, and La Clef de l'Apocalypse, by O. V. Milosz, the Polish poet who died not long ago at Fontainebleau. Nor have I yet received a good book on the Children's Crusades.[1]
List of books
From the appendix The 100 Books that Influenced Me Most:
1 Ancient Greek Dramatists 2 Arabian Nights (for children) 3 Elizabethan Playwrights (excepting Shakespeare) 4 European Playwrights of 19th Century 5 Greek Myths and Legends 6 Knights of King Arthur's Court 7 Abèlard, Pierre, The Story of My Misfortunes 8 Alain-Fournier, The Wanderer 9 Andersen, Hans Christian, Fairy Tales 10 Anonymous, Diary of a Lost One 11 Balzac, Honoré de, Seraphita 12 Balzac, Honoré de, Louis Lambert 13 Bellamy, Edward, Looking Backward 14 Belloc, Hilaire, The Path to Rome 15 Blavatsky, Mme. H. P., The Secret Doctrine 16 Boccaccio, Giovanni, The Decameron 17 Breton, André, Nadja 18 Bronte, Emily, Wuthering Heights 19 Bulwyer-Lytton, Edward, Last Days of Pompeii 20 Carroll, Lewis, Alice in Wonderland 21 Céline, Louis-Ferdinand, Journey to the End of the Night 22 Cellini, Benvenuto, Autobiography 23 Cendrars, Blaise, Virtually the complete works 24 Chesterton, G.K., Saint Francis of Assisi 25 Conrad, Joseph, His works in general 26 Cooper James Fenimore, Leatherstocking Tales 27 Defoe, Daniel, Robinson Crusoe 28 De Nerval, Gérard, His works in general 29 Dostoievsky, Feodor, His works in general 30 Dreiser, Theodore, His works in general 31 Duhamel, Geoges, Salavin Series 32 Du Maurier, George, Trilby 33 Dumas, Alexander, The Three Musketeers 34 Eckermann, Johann, Conversations with Goethe 35 Eltzbacher, Paul, Anarchism 36 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Representative Men 37 Fabre, Henri, His works in general 38 Faure, Elie, The History of Art 39 Fenollosa, Ernest, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry 40 Gide, André, Dostoievski 41 Giono, Jean, Refus d'Obéissance 42 Giono, Jean, Que ma joie domeure 43 Giono, Jean, Jean le Bleu 44 Grimm Brothers, Fairy Tales 45 Gutkind, Erich, The Absolute Collective 46 Haggard, Rider, She 47 Hamsun, Knut, His works in general 48 Henty, G. A., His works in general 49 Hesse, Hermann, Siddhartha 50 Hudson, W. H., His works in general 51 Hugo, Victor, Les Misérables 52 Huysmans, Joris Karl, Against the Grain 53 Joyce, James, Ulysses 54 Keyserling, Hermann, South American Meditations 55 Kropotkin, Peter, Mutual Aid 56 Lao-tse, Tao Teh Ch'ing 57 Latzko, Andreas, Men in War 58 Long, Haniel, Interlinear to Cabeza de Vaca 59 M, Gospel of Ramakrishna 60 Machen, Arthur, The Hill of Dreams 61 Maeterlinck, Maurice, His works in general 62 Mann, Thomas, The Magic Mountain 63 Mencken, H. L., Prejudices 64 Nietzsche, His works in general 65 Nijinsky, Diary 66 Nordhoff & Hall, Pitcairn Island 67 Nostradamus, The Centuries 68 Peck, George Wilbur, Peck's Bad Boy 69 Percival, W. O., William Blake's Circle of Destiny 70 Petronius, The Satyricon 71 Plutarch, Lives 72 Powys, John Cowper, Visions and Revisions 73 Prescott, William H., Conquest of Mexico 74 Prescott, William H., Conquest of Peru 75 Proust, Marcel, Remembrance of Things Past 76 Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel 77 Rimbaud, Jean-Arthur, His works in general 78 Rolland, Romain, Jean-Christophe 79 Rolland, Romain, Prophets of the New India 80 Rudhyar, Dane, Astrology of Personality 81 Saltus, Edgar, The Imperial Purple 82 Scott, Sir Walter, Ivanhoe 83 Sienkiewicz, Henry, Quo Vadis 84 Sikelianos, Anghelos, Proanakrousma 85 Sinnett, A. P., Esoteric Buddhism 86 Spencer, Herbert, Autobiography 87 Spengler, Oswald, The Decline of the West 88 Strindberg, August, The Inferno 89 Suarès, Carlo, Krishnamurti 90 Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro, Zen Buddhism 91 Swift, Jonathan, Guilliver's Travels 92 Tennyson, Alfred, Idylls of the King 93 Thoreau, Henry David, Civil Disobedience & Other Essays 94 Twain, Mark, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 95 Van Gogh, Vincent, Letters to Theo 96 Wassermann, Jacob, The Maurizius Case (Trilogy) 97 Weigall, Arthur, Akhnaton 98 Welch, Galbraith, The Unveiling of Timbuctoo 99 Werfel, Franz, Star of the Unborn 100 Whitman, Walt, Leaves of Grass
Trivia
The book is mentioned in Eroticism in Georges Bataille and Henry Miller by Gilles Mayné.
