MILLER, Henry.
The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder.
FIRST EDITION, INSCRIBED. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1948.
Inscribed by Henry Miller on the front free endpaper: "From Henry Miller with deep appreciation of so many kindnesses / To — Harry and Margaret / 8/27/48."
Octavo. 124 pp. Designed by Merle Armitage; prefatory essay "About Henry Miller" by Edwin Corle. Quarter black cloth over printed paper-covered boards, top edge red, in the publisher's orange-striped pictorial dust jacket. Cloth separated at the rear joint; the dust jacket with staining to the front flap and edge wear; a fair-to-good copy of an uncommon inscribed first edition. Shifreen & Jackson A66a.
Henry Miller considered The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder the most peculiar of all the stories he had written — a short fable of Auguste, a clown who could make audiences laugh but longed to give them a lasting joy. The text originated in a 1938 commission from the painter Fernand Léger, who asked Miller to write an accompaniment to a planned graphic cycle of clown and circus drawings; Léger ultimately set the text aside as unsuitable, and Miller arranged independent publication with Duell, Sloan & Pearce.
The 1948 edition is the true first, in a striking Merle Armitage design, illustrated throughout with reproductions of clown and circus artworks by Chagall, Klee, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, Dunoyer de Segonzac, and other masters, together with a facsimile of two pages of Miller's corrected typescript. Miller wrote it during his Big Sur years — he had settled on the California coast in 1944 and would remain until 1962 — the period that also produced Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. This copy carries Miller's own warm, dated inscription, presenting the book five months after publication "with deep appreciation of so many kindnesses."
SKU TO-2026-043
