MILLER, Henry.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Black Spring. First edition, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the first blank, "To Huntingdon Cairns, with all best wishes - in remembrance of pleasant days in Paris. Henry Miller 8/36". As the United States Censor in the 1930s and 40s, Cairns declared the author's first four novels obscene and banned them from the US. Despite this, he personally enjoyed Miller's writing, and became one of the author's most committed advocates and friends.Cairns (1904-1985) was appointed the official US Censor in the Customs Bureau by the Secretary of the Treasury in 1934. One of his first acts in that role was to reluctantly ban Miller's first novel, Tropic of Cancer, due to its pornographic content.As well as an assiduous lawyer, Cairns was a sensitive reader, a writer of essays and book reviews, and friends to several literary figures in his Baltimore circle. One of these, the critic H. L. Mencken, received a contraband copy of Tropic of Cancer from Miller, which he forwarded to Cairns. "Informed by Mencken that Cairns had read and admired Cancer, Miller wrote to Cairns in May 1936 announcing the imminent publication of another controversial book, Black Spring, and offering to send it to him. A few months later, Cairns and his wife, Florence, were in Paris, and the two men met" (Hoyle 2014). There, Miller presented Cairns with this copy, which Cairns read while travelling back to the US. He wrote to Miller on his return: "It filled me with admiration. I know of no other writer

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