Apartment · Parc de Montsouris · 14e arrondissement

18 Villa Seurat

The buildingStill standing

Getting inOutside only

What's there nowA private home

The studio-house stands on its private cul-de-sac off the rue de la Tombe-Issoire, in a street of listed modernist architecture.

Henry Miller's studio flat from 1934 to 1939 — the headquarters of the Villa Seurat circle, and the address where Tropic of Cancer was delivered to the door the day he moved in.

Address: 18 Villa Seurat, 75014 Paris
Years: 1931–1939

Illustration The Villa Seurat today — pale modernist façades, black-framed studio glazing, and cobbles down the private lane

The street today — the modernist artists' colony, intact.

Editorial illustration

The place, briefly

The Villa Seurat is not a villa but a street — a short private cul-de-sac off the rue de la Tombe-Issoire, built between 1924 and 1928 as a colony of artists' studio-houses, much of it designed by the modernist architect André Lurçat (No. 7bis, the sculptor Chana Orloff's house, is by Auguste Perret). The painters came first — Jean Lurçat, Marcel Gromaire, Édouard Goerg — and the neighbors over the years included Chaïm Soutine and Antonin Artaud. Into this enclave, in 1931, the philosopher-poet Michael Fraenkel began putting up a penniless Brooklyn writer named Henry Miller. The flat at No. 18 is where Tropic of Cancer begins — its opening pages are set there, with the address lightly disguised as the 'Villa Borghese' and Fraenkel appearing as Boris, the roommate prophesying the end of the world.

The address's great day came on 1 September 1934: the day Tropic of Cancer was finally published, and the day Miller — for the first time in his Paris years — got a home of his own, moving into the top-floor studio at No. 18 as its tenant. The first copies of the book were delivered to his door. The rent was paid by Anaïs Nin, with her husband Hugh Guiler's money — part of the patronage that had also financed the book's printing — and the studio became Miller's headquarters for the rest of the decade: the room where Black Spring was seen through the press and Tropic of Capricorn was written.

What made the address a movement was the traffic through it. Alfred Perlès was the constant; Nin came and went; and in August 1937 a young Lawrence Durrell, who had written Miller a fan letter from Corfu, arrived in person. Out of that season came the circle's collected mischief: The Booster, a country-club newsletter the group cheerfully hijacked into an avant-garde magazine (later renamed Delta), and the Villa Seurat Series at Obelisk Press, which in 1938 published Durrell's The Black Book, Miller's Max and the White Phagocytes, and Nin's Winter of Artifice. In June 1939 Miller closed the studio and left for Durrell's Greece; the war arrived shortly after, and the Villa Seurat decade was over.

Key facts

Lived here: Henry Miller, September 1934 – June 1939; earlier as Michael Fraenkel's guest from 1931
What it was: Top-floor studio flat in a modernist artists' cul-de-sac of the 1920s
Neighborhood: Off the rue de la Tombe-Issoire, by the Parc de Montsouris
The moment: 1 September 1934 — Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer publishes, and he moves in the same day
Today: The street stands intact, a protected enclave of modernist studio-houses

Documentary photographs

Archival and present-day photographs, reproduced with rights verified.

The paneled wooden door and enamel number plate of 18 Villa Seurat, Paris 14e — The door of number 18, its enamel plate still in place — the studio address in the 14th where Henry Miller lived from 1934, the year Tropic of Cancer was published.2026 · Mbzt, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 4.0

In images

Pen-and-ink illustration of the Villa Seurat cul-de-sac — cobbled lane, modernist studio-houses with great gridded windows, the doorway of No. 18 under a small medallion — The cobbled cul-de-sac — studio windows and the doorway at No. 18.Editorial illustration

The Villa Seurat today — pale modernist façades, black-framed studio glazing, and cobbles down the private lane — The street today — the modernist artists' colony, intact.Editorial illustration

Timeline

1924–28
The cul-de-sac rises as an artists' colony — studio-houses largely by André Lurçat, with Chana Orloff's house by Auguste Perret.
1931
Michael Fraenkel begins hosting Henry Miller at No. 18 — the flat becomes the 'Villa Borghese' of Tropic of Cancer's opening pages.
1934
On 1 September, Tropic of Cancer publishes and Miller moves into the top-floor studio as tenant — Anaïs Nin paying the rent.
1936–38
Miller writes Tropic of Capricorn in the studio; the flat runs as the circle's headquarters.
1937
Lawrence Durrell arrives from Corfu in August; The Booster is hijacked into the circle's magazine, and the Villa Seurat Series follows at Obelisk Press.
1939
Miller closes the studio in June and sails for Greece; the war ends the Villa Seurat decade.

On the map

Related books

Written here

Tropic of Capricorn

Henry Miller · 1939

The Brooklyn book was written in the Paris studio — Capricorn is the major work of the Villa Seurat tenancy, drafted in the top-floor flat between 1936 and 1938.

Written here

Hamlet

Henry Miller · 1939

Miller's side of the correspondence was written from the studio at No. 18, where he lived for the whole span of the exchange — twenty of his twenty-two letters date from 1935 to 1938.

Writers who knew this place

Henry Miller

American · The Brooklyn dropout who arrived in Paris broke at thirty-eight and wrote the exuberant, banned books that ended American censorship.

Lived here · 1934–1939

Miller moved into the top-floor studio on 1 September 1934 — the day Tropic of Cancer published, with the first copies delivered to his new door — and ran the Villa Seurat circle from it until he left for Greece in June 1939. He had stayed at No. 18 earlier as Michael Fraenkel's guest, from 1931; the flat opens Tropic of Cancer as the 'Villa Borghese.'

— Brassaï, Henry Miller: The Paris Years (1995); Ateliers-musée Chana Orloff — La Villa Seurat, cité d'artistes

Michael Fraenkel

American · Writer, publisher of the Carrefour imprint, and Miller's philosophical sparring partner — the other half of the two-volume Hamlet correspondence, begun at 18 Villa Seurat, and Boris in Tropic of Cancer.

Lived here · 1931

His apartment by 1931, when a broke Henry Miller moved in for about a month — the flat that opens Tropic of Cancer as the 'Villa Borghese.' Miller returned as tenant of the top-floor studio in 1934.

— Michael Fraenkel and Walter Lowenfels Correspondence — finding aid (excerpting Howard McCord's Dictionary of Literary Biography entry), Washington University in St. Louis; Brassaï, Henry Miller: The Paris Years (1995)

Anaïs Nin

French-Cuban-American · Diarist of the century — sixty years of the most famous journal in modern literature, Henry Miller's first champion, and, posthumously, the best-selling erotic writer of her age.

Frequented by · 1934–1939

Nin was the studio's patron as much as its visitor — she paid Miller's rent at No. 18, as she had financed Tropic of Cancer's printing, and her Winter of Artifice appeared in the flat's own imprint, the Villa Seurat Series, in 1939.

— Brassaï, Henry Miller: The Paris Years (1995); Ateliers-musée Chana Orloff — La Villa Seurat, cité d'artistes

Alfred Perlès

Austrian · Miller's Paris sidekick and Clichy flatmate — the 'Carl' of Tropic of Cancer, co-conspirator of the lean years, and later author of My Friend Henry Miller.

Frequented by · 1934–1939

The circle's constant — the Clichy flatmate followed Miller to the Villa Seurat years and co-edited the group's hijacked magazine, The Booster, with Miller and Durrell from 1937.

— Brassaï, Henry Miller: The Paris Years (1995)

Lawrence Durrell

British · The Alexandria Quartet's author — converted to writing by Tropic of Cancer at twenty-three, and Miller's correspondent and ally for forty-five years.

Frequented by · 1937–1939

Durrell arrived from Corfu in August 1937 to meet the man he'd been writing fan letters to — and stayed to co-found the circle's projects: The Booster, and the Villa Seurat Series that published his Black Book in 1938.

— Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller: A Private Correspondence (1963)

Artists who knew this place

Alfred Perlès

Austrian · Author, Journalist

The circle's constant — the Clichy flatmate followed Miller to the Villa Seurat years and co-edited the group's hijacked magazine, The Booster, with Miller and Durrell from 1937.

Lawrence Durrell

British · Author, Poet

Within walking distance

The same rue Jean-Dolent house front in color, cream walls under a grey sky, red-tiled ledges and ivy on the wall beside the lamp post

Apartment · Montparnasse

23 Rue Jean-Dolent

The Paris apartment where Blaise Cendrars and Raymone Duchâteau settled in 1950 after their marriage — his home for almost nine years, facing the rear wall of La Santé prison.

Visit the place

Street · Plaisance / Montparnasse

Rue du Château

A workers' street behind the Montparnasse yards with two literary lives — the surrealists' communal house at No. 54, and Henry Miller's broke wanderings looking for a friend and a meal.

Visit the place

The Friday Letter

Paris, one address at a time.

The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.