Selling Harris Sub Rosa

When My Life and Loves was first published, it was immediately banned throughout the English-speaking world. In the US the suppression created a market for smuggled copies, which was subsequently also met by locally printed volumes created under conditions of secrecy. Some of these were produced with Frank Harris’s blessing, many were not.

I recently acquired a few items relating to My Life and Loves in America, including some advertising material which I think might have been sent to those buying other books directly from Frank Harris, such as his biography of Oscar Wilde, promoting the different volumes of My Life as they appeared. Any purchased volumes would be supplied directly by Harris’s devotees in the US, from their own stock.

The same package also includes a letter from one of these disciples, of interest for the light it sheds on the psychology of his most fervent admirers. (Unfortunately there are too many Fred Taylors in New Jersey in this time period to nail down more about this particular one.)

Pamphlet for Volume 1

Pamphlet for Volume 2

Pamphlet for Volume 3

Letter about My Life