Tropic of Capricorn by Miller, Henry - 1939

Paris: The Obelisk Press, 1939. First edition. Fine. Second issue, with all prices cancelled. A Fine, bright example of this controversial title, completely unopened. Complete with the errata slip tipped in before the title page.

Henry Miller's controversial and exuberant account of his time in New York City, working for the aptly named Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company. The book was published in France in 1939 by Obelisk Press and, like Tropic of Cancer before it, was banned in the United States. However, Miller's books would be smuggled in and he established a considerable underground reputation before 1961, when the ban was lifted. Many significant writers have been fans of Miller, including Lawrence Durrell - who also counted him as a close friend - and George Orwell, who said Miller was "the only imaginative prose-writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past." Like much of Miller's work, the book draws strongly and literally on his own life experience and is semi-autobiographical. "The pace and jagged pattern of the action offer a superb entertainment that brings in as it goes jeremiads, casual lyrics, and sudden reaches toward the spiritual core of life" (New York Times Review). Fine.