The Marilyn Monroe Reading List: How to Read Like A Movie Star

Marilyn Monroe was a troubled soul. Her life was a tragic tale. If we put aside the childhood neglect, media hounding, and addiction issues, one of the greatest tragedies was the world’s inability to see her humanness.

Lauded as iconic pin-up and cultivated image, few realised how intelligent, how fiercely well-read, how committed to intellectual pursuit was the “blonde bombshell”. 

The Marilyn Monroe Reading List:

Marilyn Monroe had over 400 books in her personal library.

She married Arthur Miller, the playwright of Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, and A View from the Bridge.

She was friends with Carson McCullers and Truman Capote, and met her literary heroes Carl Sandburg and Saul Bellow.

And she was often interviewed with a heavy literary classic in her hands.

So why the doubt as to her intelligence? 

Here’s photographer Eve Arnold talking about the famous photo of Marilyn Monroe reading James Joyce’s Ulysses:

We worked on a beach on Long Island. She was visiting Norman Rosten the poet. As far as I remember (it is some thirty years ago) I asked her what she was reading when I went to pick her up (I was trying to get an idea of how she spent her time). She said she kept Ulysses in her car and had been reading it for a long time. She said she loved the sound of it and would read it aloud to herself to try to make sense of it- but she found it hard going. She couldn’t read it consecutively. When we stopped at a local playground to photograph she got out the book and started to read while I loaded the film. So, of course, I photographed her. It was always a collaborative effort of photographer and subject where she was concerned- but almost more her input.

Ulysses is one of the most difficult books in the English language, only topped by Joyce’s denser work Finnegans Wake.

Monroe’s struggle with Ulysses is certainly not indicative of low intelligence.

Rather, her commitment to reading it long-term, despite struggling to understand it, reveals the movie star to be keenly intelligent. 

In addition to persevering with the work – and Ulysses is most certainly a work that rewards being read over the long haul – Monroe knew instinctively that the sound of Joyce’s prose was intricately tied to the meaning.

So she read it aloud for the sheer pleasure of it.

I think admitting the work was hard going was humility on Monroe’s part, and that she would have understood a lot more than she let on.

Many photographers thought it hilarious to have a dumb bimbo star pose with such a difficult book. But Monroe wouldn’t have been making a joke. And she would have had a better shot at understanding the work than the photographers or public who laughed at her.

Another photo, one in which Monroe sits in front of her personal bookshelf, reveals one of her favourite poets: Heinrich Heine.

This was the poet who poignantly wrote:

Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people. 

One can only speculate as to what poems of Heine Monroe favoured in particular, but this isn’t the only photograph of the starlet reading his works.

A photo taken in her apartment in 1951, at the age of 25, shows her reading a volume called The Poetry and Prose of Heinrich Heine. That’s the 1948 copy, which, in my opinion, shows Monroe as a reader who kept abreast of the exciting movements of the publishing world.

That volume, incidentally, beautiful as it is, has become quite a collector’s item and will set you back over $800.

You can see another of Monroe’s favourite poets in the photograph of her reading Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.

Whitman, along with Emily Dickinson, is the greatest writer in the American tradition, and to read him is to take the mythology of the nation into your bloodstream.

Now, seeing as there were so many hundreds of books in Monroe’s library, I thought I’d put together a starter pack of books for those who want to read like her but don’t know where to start.

These are the books that would have meant the most to Monroe, discerned by virtue of what she was photographed with, what books appeared across her bookshelves, and what she made mention of.

But, first port of call, start with:

• Walt Whitman
• James Joyce
• Arthur Miller.

Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass: there are two photographs of Monroe reading this poem, spaced over a year apart, taken by different photographers who would have likely been unaware of each other. Take away?

This poetic masterpiece was a significant volume in Monroe’s life and a volume she returned to again and again.

Biographer Sam Stagg wrote of Monroe and Whitman: 

Walt Whitman was her favorite poet… She often read Whitman for relaxation. The rhythm of his long free verse lulled and stimulated her at the same time.

James Joyce’s Ulysses: as we’ve discussed, Monroe read this big work long-term. The famous photograph shows Monroe at the end of the novel, reading Molly Bloom’s stream-of-consciousness narrative. 

Monroe would have read her husband Arthur Miller’s plays, and also read his adaptations of other famous playwrights, such as Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People.

You might also want to pick up the slim but resonant Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke, which Monroe was reading on a movie set.

When the director asked her how she chose the title, Monroe replied:

On nights when I’ve got nothing else to do, I go to the Pickwick bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard and just open books at random—when I come to a page or a paragraph I like, I buy that book. So last night I bought this one. Is that wrong?

This is how I personally came to that book. I feel like the book found me. I opened it and it had exactly the life advice and wisdom that I needed during a troubled time. Fascinating that the book chose Monroe too.

You can hear about the best bits and lessons from Rilke’s masterpiece in this podcast:

• The Rilke Podcast

In 1999, Christies of New York auctioned the following books from Marilyn Monroe’s private library. I’ve drawn attention to where the intrepid, ambitious book lover might wish to start in following in the footsteps of the star:

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Monroe was a passionate civil rights advocate.

She even made a phone call on behalf of Ella Fitzgerald when one venue wouldn’t let the legendary black singer perform, and made it happen.

Fitzgerald had this to say about the story:

I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt… she personally called the owner of the Mocambo and told him she wanted me booked immediately, and if he would do it, she would take a front table every night. She told him — and it was true, due to Marilyn’s superstar status — that the press would go wild. The owner said yes, and Marilyn was there, front table, every night. The press went overboard. After that, I never had to play a small jazz club again. She was an unusual woman — a little ahead of her times. And she didn’t know it.

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

If you know anything about this iconic novel and what it has to say about glitz and glamor, it’s no wonder Monroe was drawn to it.

Did she see herself in the character of Daisy Buchanan? 

From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming

This Bond novel, along with the others in the series, was one of the personal favourites of President John F. Kennedy.

Marilyn Monroe’s love affair with the president is no secret, nor was the fact that Monroe often read the books of the men in her life.

It doesn’t take a huge stretch of the imagination to see Monroe taking this down from Kennedy’s shelf, him handing the book to her as a personal recommendation, or perhaps her reading it of her own volition in order to know more about the man she respected.

The Art Of Loving by Erich Fromm

An orphan who struggled all her life to form loving relationships and human connections, it’s not a surprise that Monroe was drawn to a book that expertly teaches one how to love.

Not just how to be loved, or be loveable, but to actively love another human being.

The work is staggering in its human insight.

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

Monroe is quoted as saying this in 1953:

The Prophet by Khalil Gibran is very inspiring. It is more or less a pattern for everyday living.

And I would agree with that.

It’s a slim but resonant volume, the life advice of which will stay with you your whole life.

Read the full book review or listen to a podcast digesting the best bits of one of Monroe’s favourite books here:

• The Prophet Podcast

On The Road by Jack Kerouac

Monroe was well-read and ahead of her time, so obviously she would have read and likely loved this symbol of counterculture.

Monroe was certainly on Kerouac’s radar, and his words on the star after her death caused a lot of controversy:

She was fucked to death.

Kerouac then goes on to explore rescue fantasies and hypothesise about how he might have saved her from her tragic demise; he would have given her love:

by telling her that she was an Angel of Light and that Clifford Odets and Strasberg and all the others were Angels of Darkness and to stay away from them and come with me to a quiet valley in the Yuma desert to grow old together.

Selected Poems by DH Lawrence

Take notice when someone has several volumes from the same writer.

It’s clear that Monroe considered D.H. Lawrence one of her literary heroes.

Not only does she have volumes of his poetry, compendiums, and essays, but she also has critical commentary on the writer and his works.

So she very much wanted to learn as much about him as possible, clearly finding Lawrence to resonate with her sensibilities. 

The Short Reign Of Pippin IV by John Steinbeck

I love the fact that Monroe was such a reciprocal fan.

She would read the books of the writers in her life, the writers that admired her for her talents.

Steinbeck, the great writers of The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, actually wrote a letter to Monroe asking for her autograph.

Steinbeck had already met Monroe, but his nephew-in-law, a huge fan of the star’s, didn’t believe him.

So Steinbeck wrote this to Monroe:

Now, I get asked for all kinds of silly favors, so I have no hesitation in asking one of you. Would you send him, in my care, a picture of yourself, perhaps in pensive, girlish mood, inscribed to him by name and indicating that you are aware of his existence. He is already your slave. This would make him mine. If you will do this, I will send you a guest key to the ladies’ entrance of Fort Knox and, furthermore, I will like you very much.

The Roman Spring Of Mrs Stone by Tennessee Williams

Monroe’s many volumes of Tennessee Williams attest to her being a great fan of the playwright.

One can imagine after she saw ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ in 1955, she decided to read the rest of the writer’s oeuvre.

Unfortunately, Williams didn’t have much sympathy for the starlet after her death.

In an essay entitled ‘Marilyn Monroe Got What She Wanted’, Williams wrote:

It’s fine to cry for Marilyn Monroe. I did, and I still do. She was tragic, but she was also lucky. There are beautiful, sad, dumb girls all over the world who endure worse than she did, but they never get to live on the screen or bathe in perfume or populate the dreams of people who love beauty or who love pain or who wonder what it must be like to possess such sexual power. Let her go. Look at the beauty, but move on. There is nothing else there. A pretty visage with a sad story. Marilyn always said she wanted to be noticed, she wanted to be loved, and she wanted to be left alone and feel safe. I think Marilyn Monroe got what she wanted.

Those are a good few volumes for you to be getting on with if you want to read like Marilyn Monroe.

But if you really want to read like Marilyn Monroe, take a deep breath…

Because here’s the full book inventory list when over 400 books from Monroe’s home were auctioned off:

You’ll notice as you go through this list that there’s a lot of:

• Freud
• Psychology
• Classics
• Counter-cultural cult novels
• Books on art and music
• Ancient philosophy
• Mythology
• Politics
• Plays
• Religion
• Travel books
• Books by female writers
• Poetry, both European and American

Level up your reading

Before I give you the full Marilyn Monroe reading list, you might want to consider signing up for my newsletter.

I send emails most days about everything from refining your aesthetic tastes, nuanced political and world affairs commentary, great book recommendations, health hacks, and educational tips.

Sign up if you want consistent quality in your inbox or if you’d like to connect with myself.

1) Let’s Make Love by Matthew Andrews (novelisation of the movie)

2) How To Travel Incognito by Ludwig Bemelmans

3) To The One I Love Best by Ludwig Bemelmans

4) Thurber Country by James Thurber

5) The Fall by Albert Camus

6) Marilyn Monroe by George Carpozi

7) Camille by Alexander Dumas

8) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

9) The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Merritt-Farmer

10) The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

11) From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming

12) The Art Of Loving by Erich Fromm

13) The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

14) Ulysses by James Joyce

15) Stoned Like A Statue: A Complete Survey Of Drinking Cliches, Primitive, Classical & Modern by Howard Kandel & Don Safran, with an intro by Dean Martin 

16) The Last Temptation Of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis

17) On The Road by Jack Kerouac

18) Selected Poems by DH Lawrence 19 and 20) Sons And Lovers by DH Lawrence (2 editions)

21) The Portable DH Lawrence

22) Etruscan Places (DH Lawrence?)

23) DH Lawrence: A Basic Study Of His Ideas by Mary Freeman

24) The Assistant by Bernard Malamud

25) The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud

26) Death In Venice & Seven Other Stories by Thomas Mann

27) Last Essays by Thomas Mann

28) The Thomas Mann Reader

29) Hawaii by James Michener

30) Red Roses For Me by Sean O’Casey

31) I Knock At The Door by Sean O’Casey

32) Selected Plays by Sean O’Casey

33) The Green Crow by Sean O’Casey

34) Golden Boy by Clifford Odets

35) Clash By Night by Clifford Odets

36) The Country Girl by Clifford Odets

37) 6 Plays Of Clifford Odets

38) The Cat With 2 Faces by Gordon Young

39) Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill

40) Part Of A Long Story: Eugene O’Neill As A Young Man In Love by Agnes Boulton

41) The Little Engine That Could by Piper Watty (with childish pencil scrawls at end, possibly MM’s)

42) The New Joy Of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer & Marion Rombauer-Becker (with some cut recipes, page markers, a typed diet sheet and manuscript shopping list, apparently in MM’s hand, laid in)

43) Selected Plays Of George Bernard Shaw

44) Ellen Terry And Bernard Shaw – A Correspondence

45) Bernard Shaw & Mrs Patrick Campbell – Their Correspondence

46) The Short Reigh Of Pippin IV by John Steinbeck

47) Once There Was A War by John Steinbeck

48) Set This House On Fire by William Styron

49) Lie Down In Darkness (William Styron?)

50) The Roman Spring Of Mrs Stone by Tennessee Williams

51) Camino Real by Tennessee Williams

52) A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams (with notes by MM)

53) The Flower In Drama And Glamour by Stark Young (inscribed to MM by Lee Strasberg, Christmas 1955)

54) Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

55) The Story Of A Novel by Thomas Wolfe

56) Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe

57) A Stone, A Leaf, A Door (Thomas Wolfe?)

58) Thomas Wolfe’s Letters To His Mother, ed. John Skally Terry

59) A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway

60) The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

61) Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

62) Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser

63) Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck

64) The American Claimant & Other Stories & Sketches by Mark Twain

65) In Defense of Harriet Shelley & Other Essays (Mark Twain?)

66) The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

67) Roughing It (Mark Twain?)

68) The Magic Christian by Terry Southern

69) A Death In The Family by James Agee

70) The War Lover by John Hersey

71) Don’t Call Me By My Right Name & Other Stories by James Purdy

72) Malcolm by James Purdy

73) The Portable Irish Reader (pub. Viking)

74) The Portable Poe – Edgar Allen Poe

75) The Portable Walt Whitman

76) This Week’s Short Stories (New York, 1953)

77) Bedside Book Of Famous Short Stories

78) Short Novels Of Colette

79) Short Story Masterpieces (New York, 1960)

80) The Passionate Playgoer by George Oppenheimer

81) Fancies And Goodnights by John Collier

82) Evergreen Review, Vol 2, No. 6

83) The Medal & Other Stories by Luigi Pirandello 

84) Max Weber 

85) Renoir by Albert Skira

86) Max by Giovannetti Pericle 

87) The Family Of Man by Carl Sandburg

88-90) Horizon, A Magazine Of The Arts (Nov 1959, Jan 1960, Mar 1960.)

91) Jean Dubuffet by Daniel Cordier

92) The Summing Up by W. Somerset Maugham

93) Close To Colette by Maurice Goudeket

94) This Demi-Paradise by Margaret Halsey

95) God Protect Me From My Friends by Gavin Maxwell

96) Minister Of Death: The Adolf Eichmann Story by Quentin Reynolds, Ephraim Katz and Zwy Aldouby

97) Dance To The Piper by Agnes DeMille

98) Goodness Had Nothing To Do With It by Mae West

99) Act One by Moss Hart

100) Science And Health With Key To The Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy

101) Poems, Including Christ And Christmas by Mary Baker Eddy

102) 2 Plays: Peace And Lysistrata by Aristophanes

103) Of The Nature Of Things by Lucretius

104) The Philosophy Of Plato

105) Mythology by Edith Hamilton

106) Theory Of Poetry And Fine Art by Aristotle

107) Metaphysics by Aristotle

108-111) Plutarch’s Lives, Vols 3-6 only (of 6) by William and John Langhorne

112) Bound For Glory by Woody Guthrie

113) The Support Of The Mysteries by Paul Breslow

114) Paris Blues by Harold Flender

115) The Shook-Up Generation by Harrison E. Salisbury

116) An Mands Ansigt by Arthur Miller

117) Independent People by Halldor Laxness

118) Mujer by Lina Rolan (inscribed to MM by author)

119) The Havamal, ed. D.E. Martin Clarke

120) Yuan Mei: 18th Century Chinese Poet by Arthur Waley

121) Almanach: Das 73 Jahr by S. Fischer Verlag

122) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

123) The Works Of Rabelais

124) The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust

125) Cities Of The Plain by Marcel Proust

126) Within A Budding Grove by Marcel Proust

127) The Sweet Cheat Gone by Marcel Proust

128) The Captive by Marcel Proust

129) Nana by Emile Zola

130) Plays by Moliere 

131) The Life And Work of Sigmund Freud by Ernest Jones

132) Letters Of Sigmund Freud, ed. Ernest L. Freud

133) Glory Reflected by Martin Freud

134) Moses And Monotheism by Sigmund Freud

135) Conditioned Reflex Therapy by Andrew Salter

136-137) The Wise Garden Encyclopedia, ed. E.L.D. Seymour (2 editions)

138) Landscaping Your Own Home by Alice Dustan

139) Outpost Nurseries – publicity brochure

140) The Forest And The Sea by Marston Bates

141) Pet Turtles by Julien Bronson

142) A Book About Bees by Edwin Way Teale

143) Codfish, Cats & Civilisation by Gary Webster

144) How To Do It, Or, The Art Of Lively Entertaining by Elsa Maxwell

145) Wake Up, Stupid by Mark Harris

146) Merry Christmas, Happy New Year by Phyllis McGinley 

147) The Hero Maker by Akbar Del Piombo & Norman Rubington

148) How To Talk At Gin by Ernie Kovacs

149) VIP Tosses A Party, by Virgil Partch

150) Who Blowed Up The House & Other Ozark Folk Tales, ed. Randolph Vance

151) Snobs by Russell Lynes

152) The Form of Daily Prayers

153) Sephath Emeth (Speech Of Truth): Order Of Prayers For The Wholes Year In Jewish and English

154) The Holy Scriptures According To The Masoretic Text (inscribed to MM by Paula Strasberg, July 1, 1956)

155) The Law by Roger Vailland

156) The Building by Peter Martin

157) The Mermaids by Boros

158) They Came To Cordura by Glendon Swarthout

159) The 7th Cross by Anna Seghers

160) A European Education by Romain Gary

161) Strike For A Kingdom by Menna Gallie

162) The Slide Area by Gavin Lambert

163) The Woman Who Was Poor by Leon Bloy

164) Green Mansions by W.H. Hudson

165) The Contenders by John Wain

166) The Best Of All Worlds, Or, What Voltaire Never Knew by Hans Jorgen Lembourn (is this the same guy who later wrote ’40 Days With Marilyn’?)

167) The Story Of Esther Costello by Nicholas Montsarrat

168) Oh Careless Love by Maurice Zolotow (MM biographer)

169) Add A Dash Of Pity by Peter Ustinov

170) An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (filmed as A Place In The Sun – MM admired Elizabeth Taylor’s performance)

171) The Mark Of The Warrior by Paul Scott

172) The Dancing Bear by Edzard Schaper

173) Miracle In The Rain by Ben Hecht (co-author of MM’s autobiography)

174) The Guide by R.K. Narayan

175) Blow Up A Storm by Garson Kanin (later wrote screenplay ‘Moviola’, featurning an MM-based character)

176) Jonathan by Russell O’Neill

177) Fowlers End by Gerald Kersh

178) Hurricane Season by Ralph Winnett

179) The un-Americans by Alvah Bessie (later wrote The Symbol, a novel loosely based on MM’s life)

180) The Devil’s Advocate by Morris L. West

181) On Such A Night by Anthony Quayle 

182) Say You Never Saw Me by Arthur Nesbitt

183) All The Naked Heroes by Alan Kapener

184) Jeremy Todd by Hamilton Maule

185) Miss America by Daniel Stren

186) Fever In The Blood by William Pearson 

187) Spartacus by Howard Fast

188) Venetian Red by L.M. Pasinetti

189) A Cup Of Tea For Mr Thorgill by Storm Jameson

190) Six O’Clock Casual by Henry W. Cune

191) Mischief by Charlotte Armstrong (the movie ‘Don’t Bother To Knock’ was based on this novel)

192) The Gingko Tree by Sheelagh Burns

193) The Mountain Road by Theodore H. White

194) Three Circles Of Light by Pietro Di Donato

195) The Day The Money Stopped by Brendan Gill

196) The Carpetbaggers by Harold Robbins (Hollywood-set bestseller, featuring a Jean Harlow-based character, Rina Marlowe. Marilyn’s secretary, Margerie Stengel, recalls that Marilyn was reading a Robbins novel in her New York apartment in 1961.)

197-198) Justine by Lawrence Durrell (2 editions, possibly read during filming of The Misfits)

199) Balthazar by Lawrence Durrell

200) Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

201) The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

202) The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett

203) Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Dog by Dylan Thomas (Marilyn met Thomas in Shelley Winters’ apartment circa 1951)

204) Hear Us O Lord From Heaven Thy Dwelling Place, by Malcolm Lowry

205) The Sound And The Fury/As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner 

206) God’s Little Acre by Erskine Caldwell

207) Anna Christie/The Emperor Jones/The Hairy Ape by Eugene O’Neill (Marilyn played Anna in a scene performed at the Actor’s Studio in 1956)

208) The Philosophy Of Schopenhauer by Irwin Edman

209) The Philosophy Of Spinoza by Joseph Ratner

210) The Dubliners by James Joyce

211) Selected Poems by Emily Dickinson

212) The Collected Short Stories by Dorothy Parker (Friend of Marilyn’s, lived nearby her Doheny Drive apartment in 1961)

213) Selected Works by Alexander Pope

214) The Red And The Black by Stendhal

215) The Life Of Michelangelo by John Addington

216) Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (Niagara director Henry Hathaway wanted to film this with MM and James Dean. It was eventually made with Kim Novak and Laurence Harvey.)

217) Three Famous French Romances (W. Somerset Maugham?)

218) Napoleon by Emil Ludwig 

219) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (a second copy?)

220) The Poems And Fairy-Tales by Oscar Wilde

221) Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland/Through The Looking Glass/The Hunting Of The Snark, by Lewis Carroll

222) A High Wind In Jamaica by Richard Hughes

223) An Anthology Of American Negro Literature, ed. Sylvestre C. Watkins

224) Beethoven: His Spiritual Development by J.W.N. Sullivan

225) Music For The Millions by David Ewen

226) Schubert by Ralph Bates

227) Men Of Music by Wallace Brockaway and Herbert Weinstock

228) The Potting Shed by Graham Greene

229) Politics In The American Drama by Caspar Nannes

230) Sons Of Men by Herschel Steinhardt

231) Born Yesterday by Garson Kanin (MM auditioned for the movie, but Judy Holliday got the part)

232) Untitled & Other Radio Drams by Norman Corwin

233) Thirteen By Corwin, by Norman Corwin

234) More By Corwin, by Norman Corwin

235) Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill (a second copy)

236) Best American Plays: Third Series, 1945-1951

237) Theatre ’52 by John Chapman

238) 16 Famous European Plays, by Bennett Cerf and Van H. Cartmell

239) The Complete Plays Of Henry James

240) 20 Best Plays Of The Modern American Theatre, by John Glassner

241) Elizabethan Plays by Hazelton Spencer

242) Critics’ Choice by Jack Gaver

243) Modern American Dramas by Harlan Hatcher

244) The Album Of The Cambridge Garrick Club

245) A Shropshire Lad by A.E. Houseman

246) The Poetry & Prose Of Heinrich Heine by Frederich Ewen

247) The Poetical works Of John Milton, by H.C. Beeching

248) The Poetical Works Of Robert Browning (H.C. Beeching?)

249) Wordsworth by Richard Wilbur

250) The Poetical Works Of Shelley (Richard Wilbur?)

251) The Portable Blake, by William Blake

252) William Shakespeare: Sonnets, ed. Mary Jane Gorton

253) Poems Of Robert Burns, ed. Henry Meikle & William Beattie

254) The Penguin Book Of English Verse, ed. John Hayward

255) Aragon: Poet Of The French Resistance, by Hannah Josephson & Malcolm Cowley

256) Star Crossed by Margaret Tilden

257 and 258) Collected Sonnets by Edna St Vincent Millay (2 editions)

259) Robert Frost’s Poems by Louis Untermeyer (Marilyn befriended Untermeyer during her marriage to Arthur)

260) Poe: Complete Poems by Richard Wilbur (a 2nd copy?)

261) The Life And Times Of Archy And Mehitabel by Don Marquis

262) The Pocketbook Of Modern Verse by Oscar Williams

263) Poems by John Tagliabue

264) Selected Poems by Rafael Alberti

265) Selected Poetry by Robinson Jeffers

266) The American Puritans: Their Prose & Poetry, by Perry Miller

267) Selected Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke

268) Poet In New York by Federico Garcia Lorca

269) The Vapor Trail by Ivan Lawrence Becker (inscribed to Arthur by the author, there is also a note to MM)

270) Love Poems & Love Letters For All The Year

271) 100 Modern Poems, ed. Selden Rodman

272) The Sweeniad, by Myra Buttle

273) Poetry: A Magazine Of Verse, Vol.70, no. 6

274) The Wall Between by Anne Braden

275) The Roots Of American Communism by Theodore Draper

276) A View Of The Nation – An Anthology : 1955-1959, ed. Henry Christian

277) A Socialist’s Faith by Norman Thomas

278-279) Rededication To Freedom by Benjamin Ginzburg (2 copies)

280) The Ignorant Armies by E.M. Halliday

281) Commonwealth Vs Sacco & Vanzetti, by Robert P. Weeks 

282) Journey To The Beginning by Edgar Snow

283) Das Kapital by Karl Marx

284) Lidice by Eleanor Wheeler

285) The Study Of History by Arnold Toynbee

286) America The Invincible by Emmet John Hughes

287) The Unfinished Country by Max Lerner

288) Red Mirage by John O’Kearney

289) Background & Foreground – The New York Times Magazine: An Anthology, ed. Lester Markel (a friend of MM)

290) The Failure Of Success by Esther Milner

291) A Piece Of My Mind by Edmund Wilson

292) The Truth About The Munich Crisis by Viscount Maugham

293) The Alienation Of Modern Man by Fritz Pappenheim

294) A Train Of Powder by Rebecca West

295) Report From Palermo by Danilo Dolci

296) The Devil In Massachusetts by Marion Starkey

297) American Rights: The Constitution In Action, by Walter Gellhorn

298) Night by Francis Pollini

299) The Right Of The People by William Douglas

300) The Jury Is Still Out by Irwin Davidson and Richard Gehman

301) First Degree by William Kunstler

302) Democracy In America by Alexis De Tocqueville

303) World Underworld by Andrew Varna

304) Catechism For Young Children (1936, so may be from Norma Jeane’s childhood)

305) Prayer Changes Things (1952, inscribed to MM – perhaps from Jane Russell?)

306) The Prophet by Kahlil Bibran (a second copy?)

307) The Magic Word L.I.D.G.T.T.F.T.A.T.I.M. by Robert Collier

308) The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (a third copy?)

309) His Brother’s Keeper by Milton Gross (3-page extract from Readers’ Digest, Dec 1961)

310) Christliches ergissmeinnicht by K. Ehmann

311) And It Was Told Of A Certain Potter by Walter C. Lanyon (1922, so may be from childhood. Several newspaper poems and prayers tipped in.)

312) Bahai Prayers (inscribed to MM, ‘Marilyn Monroe Maybeline. A gift for my darling Maybeline, with all my love, Charlzetta’ – dated 1961.)

313) Man Against Himself by Karl A. Menninger

314) The Tower And The Abyss by Erich Kahler

315) Something To Live By, by Dorothea S. Kopplin

316) Man’s Supreme Inheritance by Alexander F. Matthias

317) The Miracles Of Your Mind by Joseph Murphy

318) The Wisdom Of The Sands by Antoine de Saint-Exupery 

319) A Prison, A Paradise by Loran Hurnscot

320) The Magic Of Believing by Claude M. Bristol

321) Peace Of Mind by Joshua Loth Liebman

322) The Use Of The Self by Alexander F. Matthias

323) The Power Within You by Claude M. Bristol

324) The Call Girl by Harold Greenwald

325) Troubled Women by Lucy Freeman (who later wrote ‘Why Norma Jean Killed Marilyn Monroe’)

326) Relax And Live by Joseph A. Kennedy

327) Forever Young, Forever Healthy by Indra Devi

328) The Open Self by Charles Morris

329) Hypnotism Today by Leslie Lecron & Jean Bordeaux

330) The Masks Of God: Primitive Mythology, by Joseph Campbell

331) Some Characteristics Of Today by Rudolph Steiner

Reference

332) Baby & Child Care by Dr Benjamin Spock (pub. 1958)

333) Flower Arranging For Fun by Hazel Peckinpaugh Dunlop

334) Hugo’s Pocket Dictionary: French-English And English-French

335) Spoken French For Travellers And Tourists, by Charles Kany & Mathurin Dondo

336) Roget’s Pocket Thesaurus, by C.O. Mawson & K.A. Whiting

337) What Is A Jew? by Morris Kertzer

338) A Partisan Guide To The Jewish Problem, by Milton Steinberg

339) The Tales Of Rabbi Nachman, by Martin Buber

340) The Saviours Of God: Spiritual Exercises, by Nikos Kazantzakis

341) The Prophet by Kahlil Gilbran (4th copy?)

342) The Dead Sea Scrolls by Millar Burrows

343) The Secret Books Of The Egyptian Gnostics, by Jean Doresse

344) Jesus by Kahlil Gilbran

345) Memories Of A Catholic Girlhood, by Mary McCarthy

346) Why I Am Not A Christian, by Bertrand Russell

347) Redemption & Other Plays by Leo Tolstoy

348) The Viking Library Portable Anton Chekhov

349) The House Of The Dead, by Fyodor Dostoevsky

350) Crime And Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

351) Best Russian Stories: An Anthology, ed. Thomas Seltzer

352) The Plays Of Anton Chekhov

353) Smoke by Ivan Turgenev

354) The Poems, Prose & Plays Of Alexander Pushkin

355) The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (not in the Christies’ catalogue. But friends of MM recall her reading it as a young actress, and she had hopes of playing Grushenka. Her own remarks in interviews make it clear that she had read the novel.)

356) Our Knowledge Of The External World, by Bertrand Russell

357) Common Sense And Nuclear Warfare, by Bertrand Russell

358) Out Of My Later Years by Albert Einstein

359) Men And Atoms by William Laurence

360) Man Alive by Daniel Colin Munro (inscribed to Renna Campbell from Lorraine?)

361) Doctor Pygmalion by Maxwell Maltz

362) Panorama: A New Review, ed. R.F. Tannenbaum

363) Everyman’s Search by Rebecca Beard

364) Of Stars And Men by Harlow Shapley

365) From Hiroshima To The Moon, by Daniel Lang

366) The Open Mind by J. Robert Oppenheimer

367) Sexual Impotence In The Male, by Leonard Paul Wershub

368) Medea by Jeffers Robinson

369) Antigone by Jean Anouilh

370) Bell, Book And Candle by John Van Druten

371) The Women by Clare Boothe

372) Jean Of Lorraine by Maxwell Anderson

373) The Sawbwa And His Secretary by C.Y. Lee

374) The Twain Shall Meet by Christopher Rand

375) Kingdom Of The Rocks by Consuelo De Saint-Exupery

376) The Heart Of India by Alexander Campbell

377) Man-Eaters Of India by Jim Corbett

378) Jungle Lore by Jim Corbett

379) My India by Jim Corbett

380) A Time In Rome by Elizabeth Bowen

381) London by Jacques Boussard

382) New York State Vacationlands

383) Russian Journey by William O. Douglas

384) The Golden Bough by James G. Frazer

385) The Portable Dorothy Parker

386) My Antonia by Willa Cather

387) Lucy Gayheart by Willa Cather

388) The Ballad Of The Sad Cafe by Carson McCullers (befriended Marilyn when she first moved to New York)

389) The Short Novels Of Colette (A second copy?)

390) The Little Disturbances Of Man by Grace Paley

391) The Autobiography Of Lincoln Steffens (read during The Fireball)

392-403) Carl Sandburg’s 12-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln

404) The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery (Marilyn gave a copy to Joe after their wedding)

405) Poems Of W.B. Yeats (Marilyn read his poems aloud at Norman Rosten’s house)

406) Mr Roberts by Joyce Cary

407) The Thinking Body by Mabel Elsworth Todd

408) The Actor Prepares by Konstantin Stanislavsky

409) The Bible

410) The Biography Of Eleanora Duse, by William Weaver

411) De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Study Of Human Bone Structure) by Andreas Vesalius 

412) Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson

413) Gertrude Lawrence As Mrs A, by Richard Aldrich

414) Goodnight Sweet Prince by Gene Fowler

415) Greek Mythology by Edith Hamilton

416) How Stanislavsky Directs by Mikhail Gorchakov (posted earlier by Felicia)

417) I Married Adventure by Olso Johnson

418) The Importance Of Living by Lin Yutang

419) Letters To A Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke (read during All About Eve) 

420) Psychology Of Everyday Life by Sigmund Freud

421) The Rains Came by Louis Broomfield

422) The Rights Of Man by Thomas Paine (read during some Like It Hot)

423) Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust

424) To The Actor by Michael Chekhov (Marilyn’s acting teacher from 1950-1955)

425) Captain Newman, M.D. (Novel based on Dr Ralph Greenson’s as an army doctor in Korea. Marilyn was said to be reading this on the week of her death.A film based on the book was released in 1963.)

426) Songs For Patricia by Norman Rosten (posted by Paju)

427) A Lost Lady by Willa Cather (Marilyn hoped to film this with her production company. But an earlier adaptation was so disappointing to the author, that she withdrew the film rights.)

428) Lust For Life by Irving Stone

429) The Deer Park by Norman Mailer (Hollywood-based novel. Marilyn commented on the book, ‘He’s too impressed by power, in my opinion.’ Mailer tried unsuccessfully to meet Marilyn, and after her death wrote several books on her.)

430) The Rebel by Albert Camus

Which book from the Marilyn Monroe reading list will you start with?

Let me know!