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Arthur Miller
Christopher Bigsby
Harvard University Press, 2009

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title

“Thanks to Bigsby’s research, particularly into previously unseen material, his account of Miller trying to hang on to his soul in midcentury America shows that he was large not least in his contradictions…What the book makes newly clear, though, is how much of Miller’s work reflects his own personal struggles.”—Jeremy McCarter, New York Times Book Review

“Bigsby’s biography is so effective because it manages to locate Miller’s art in terms both of the progression of his idealism and the regressions of his actual experience. There can’t be many writers who appeared to live so much at the center of their times and who suffered so much from that seeming centrality.”—Andrew O’Hagan, London Review of Books

This is the long-awaited biography of one of the twentieth century’s greatest playwrights, Arthur Miller, whose postwar decade of work earned him international critical and popular acclaim. Christopher Bigsby’s gripping, meticulously researched biography, based on boxes of papers made available to him before Miller’s death, examines his refusal to name names before the notorious House on Un-American Activities Committee, offers new insights into Miller’s marriage to Marilyn Monroe, and sheds new light on how their relationship informed Miller’s subsequent great plays.

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front cover of Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller
1962-2005
Christopher Bigsby
University of Michigan Press, 2013

Christopher Bigsby's masterful two-volume biography of Arthur Miller sheds new light on one of the twentieth century's most acclaimed literary figures.  Plays such as Death of a Salesman, A View from the Bridge, and The Crucible brought Miller an international following, and events such as his refusal to provide information to the House Un-American Activities Committee and his marriage to Marilyn Monroe kept him in the public eye.  The second half of his life, the focus of this volume, proved no less fascinating.  In 1962, Monroe died, and he married photographer Inge Morath, a relationship that transformed him as a writer and as a person. His activism in support of political and social causes only increased during the period, including criticism of U.S. foreign policy in Vietnam and contemporary conflicts in the Middle East. In this period of his life, he also became renowned for his work in support of dissident writers in Russia, Czechoslovakia, China, and elsewhere.

The second volume of this magisterial biography offers a compelling narrative of a singular American life, a life story enriched by the biographer's uncommon access to Miller and his unpublished papers while researching this book. The result is an authoritative biography that provides illuminating detail and invaluable insights into the Miller the artist and Miller the man.

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