Book of the Month November 2023: Lee Miller and Surrealism in Britain

Our November Book of the Month – with 20% off when you apply code MONTH20 – is Lee Miller and Surrealism in Britain, edited by Eleanor Clayton. 

This is the first book to consider the photography of Lee Miller in relation to Surrealism in Britain and alongside artworks by key Surrealist artists, and the first to offer detailed analysis and sourcings of Miller's Surrealist collages. 

Lee Miller is having a moment! As Georgina Adam writes for The Art Newspaper, collectors and institutions are only now paying sustained attention to the Modern artist and photojournalist Lee Miller, more than 75 years later.

This month two new exhibitions are opening: the Heide Museum of Modern Art in Australia is presenting a major survey of her work (from 4 November until 25 February 2024), curated by Antony Penrose.

And Gagosian in New York is showing Seeing Is Believing: Lee Miller and Friends (from 11 November until 22 December), which will feature photographs by Miller and Roland Penrose, and works on paper by artists they knew, lived with and loved: Joseph Cornell, Max Ernst, Dora Maar, Man Ray, Henry Moore, Valentine Penrose and Picasso.

Lee Miller is also of great importance for Lund Humphries as a publishing company... In May 1941 Lund Humphries published Grim Glory: Pictures of Britain Under Fire edited by Ernestine Carter, which with 22 of Lee Miller’s images. Find out more in this blogpost by Lee Miller and Roland Penrose's son, Anthony Penrose. 
Lee Miller was also a good friend of Surrealist artist Dorothea Tanning - on whom Lund Humphries has published a monograph by Victoria Carruthers. Read our interview with Victoria about Dorothea's art.