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What Was In Marilyn Monroe's Personal Library?
By
Jen Carlson
Published Mar 12, 2013
Modified Mar 12, 2013
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By
Jen Carlson
Published Mar 12, 2013
Modified Mar 12, 2013
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There are plenty of photos showing Marilyn Monroe in her glamorous Hollywood attire, but there may even be more of the sex symbol... reading. Even a dip in the shallow end of Monroe's candid video footage and photo archives will show you that side of her, and now you can see what books the former Mrs. Arthur Miller always had her nose in.
According to OpenCulture, when Monroe died in 1962 she left around 400 books behind, "many of which were later catalogued and auctioned off by Christie’s in New York City." Now on LibraryThing you can get a look at 262 of those books—her collection included Ulysses by James Joyce, Crime And Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Bound For Glory by Woody Guthrie, The Roots Of American Communism by Theodore Draper (a risky title to keep around given that whole FBI thing), The Bible, How To Travel Incognito by Ludwig Bemelmans, The Little Engine That Could, and Jack Kerouac's On The Road. She also had a number of books that spoke to a more domestic life, including The Joy of Cooking, Baby & Child Care by Dr. Benjamin Spock, and one guide to flower arranging.
Upon the release of Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters in 2010, Sam Kashner wrote in Vanity Fair:
"Several photographs taken of Marilyn earlier in her life—the ones she especially liked—show her reading. Eve Arnold photographed her for Esquire magazine in a playground in Amagansett reading James Joyce’s Ulysses. Alfred Eisenstaedt photographed her, for Life, at home, dressed in white slacks and a black top, curled up on her sofa, reading, in front of a shelf of books—her personal library, which would grow to 400 volumes. In another photograph, she’s on a pulled-out sofa bed reading the poetry of Heinrich Heine.
If some photographers thought it was funny to pose the world’s most famously voluptuous 'dumb blonde' with a book—James Joyce! Heinrich Heine!—it wasn’t a joke to her. In these newly discovered diary entries and poems, Marilyn reveals a young woman for whom writing and poetry were lifelines, the ways and means to discover who she was and to sort through her often tumultuous emotional life. And books were a refuge and a companion for Marilyn during her bouts of insomnia."
Click through for a look at some of those photos, which have become just as iconic as Monroe standing over a subway grate.
Tagged
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Marilyn Monroe
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Jen Carlson
Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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