Max and the White Phagocytes.

Paris: The Obelisk Press,, 1938. Inscribed to an eccentric poet and reformed rake First edition, first impression, presentation copy inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "To Audrey Beecham, with greetings from the red blood corpuscules. Henry Miller, Paris, 4/11/39". Beecham was a "poet and eccentric" (ODNB), and descendent of Thomas Beecham, founder of the eponymous pharmaceuticals empire. Miller published several of her poems while editor at Delta magazine. She once took an extended holiday from her Oxford studies to run guns for the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War. When she left Oxford with a second-class degree in 1937, she moved to Paris, where she befriended Miller, Anais Nin, and Lawrence Durrell. In the 1940s she spent much of her time in London, where she garnered a serious poetic reputation, and befriended Joe Ackerley and Dylan Thomas: "she prided herself on her mastery of martial arts and on her claim to have knocked out Dylan Thomas cold when he made unwelcome advances to her" (ibid.) To the surprise of her contemporaries, she applied for and was appointed the warden of Nightingale Hall, the women's residence at the University of Nottingham, in 1950. Lord David Cecil remarked on her unexpected appointment, "There's no martinet like a reformed rake" (ibid.) This is the second work in Miller's Villa Seurat series. It collects 12 essays and short stories, including six previously unpublished works. Octavo. Original tan wrappers with flaps, spine lettered in black with imprint in green, front cover lettered in black on green ground, edges untrimmed. Housed in a custom blue cloth flat-backed box. Toned and rubbed, front joint split at ends but firm, rear wrapper soiled, a few nicks and creases to edges. A very good copy. Pearson A57a; Porter, p. 11.