Arthur Miller's Collected Plays

New York: Viking Press, 1957. Hardcover. Good. Second printing. Quarter cloth and paper covered boards. A bit worn at the extremities, a good copy lacking the dustwrapper. A copy of Miller's collected plays from the library of Xenia J. Chekhov, the second wife of Michael Chekhov, who was the nephew of Anton Chekhov and Marilyn Monroe's acting teacher on the West Coast. Miller has Inscribed the book twice, once briefly on the front board ("For Mrs. Michael Checkov [sic]. Arthur Miller") and a second time in a lengthy Inscription that occupies the entire front fly:

"Dear Mrs. Checkov; I hope this book, the work of ten years, will give you pleasure. Through Marilyn, and now through you, I have come to feel a strange closeness to Mr. Checkov. I am indebted to him and to you for your goodness and help to Marilyn who is living testimony of your husband's lasting ability to inspire.

For myself, I know that he saw more precisely and more deeply than any other man the vision my work was striving to realize and the esthetic means I have employed. I feel joined to him by this understanding-- this man I never met but who was my friend.

To both of you, therefore, my deepest respects.

Arthur Miller

September, 1958."

Initially Monroe took biweekly lessons with Michael Chekhov and she considered his book *To the Actor* to be her essential guide to the craft. This volume displays an interesting personal link between Miller and Marilyn (married 1956-1961) by way of Chekhov who, as Miller notes, he never personally met. Despite that, it was Chekhov who, as Miller states, "saw more precisely and more deeply than any other man the vision my work was striving to realize and the esthetic means I have employed."

The book came from Lawrence Stern, author of *Stage Management*, who was bequeathed the book in the will of Xenia Chekhov. A wonderful inscription with a significant association, and notably mentions Monroe, who seldom appears in Miller's inscriptions.