Perry Miller

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Miller was born in Chicago in 1905 to Eben Perry Sturges Miller, a physician from Mansfield, Ohio, and Sarah Gertrude Miller (née Eddy) from Bellows Falls, Vermont.{{cite book |last1=Marquis |first1=Albert Nelson |title=Who's Who in Chicago: Volume 404 |date=1926 |publisher=A.N. Marquis & Company |location=Chicago, IL |page=606}} His father appeared in the deacon's candidacy lists for Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in 1895 and 1898,{{cite book |title=Journal of the Proceedings of the Protestant Episcopal Church Diocese of Western Michigan Twenty-First Annual Convention |date=1898 |publisher=Stanton Printing Company |location=Grand Rapids, Michigan |page=97}} but he also received a "notice of discipline" for "abandonment or forfeiture of the Holy Orders" and "deposition" from the 1898 ministry.{{cite book |title=Journal of Proceedings of the Twenty-Six Annual Convention of the Diocese of Western Michigan |date=1900 |publisher=Powers-Tyson Printing Company |location=Grand Rapids, Michigan |page=80}} The late 19th-century Episcopal Church of Illinois commonly issued notices of discipline for cases of "moral delinquency," "doctrinal errors," and "sickness and infirmity." Perry Miller was born seven years later.{{cite book |title=Journal of the Twenty-Fourth Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Illinois |date=1861 |publisher=Printed for the Convention |location=Chicago, IL |page=52}}

Perry Miller left home three months before his eighteenth birthday. Inspired by hearing about the adventures of World War I veterans in Europe, between 1922 and 1926, Miller traveled widely, by his own account working in California lettuce fields, acting on Broadway [Greenwich Village], writing for magazines, and working aboard a freighter ship along the Congo River.{{Cite web |title=Happy Puritan {{!}} News {{!}} The Harvard Crimson |url=https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1955/3/4/happy-puritan-pfrom-the-lettuce-fields/ |access-date=2023-08-02 |website=www.thecrimson.com}}

In a 1956 preface to the Errand into the Wilderness collection, Perry Miller disclosed that, along the shores of the Congo River, he had decided to pursue the intellectual history of Puritanism. "At Matadi on the banks of the Congo", Miller recounted, "seeking 'adventure' " that he believed World War I veterans had experienced (noting a lack of prescience that "I too should have my own War"), he came to "realize a determination." Miller acknowledged that "the adventures that Africa afforded were tawdry enough, but it became the setting for a sudden epiphany (if the word be not too strong) of the pressing necessity for expounding my America to the twentieth century." Miller compared his situation to that of Edward Gibbon, who sat "disconsolate amid the ruins of the Capitol at Rome" when a similar epiphany thrust upon Gibbon the " 'laborious work' of The Decline and Fall." Thus "it was given to me, equally disconsolate on the edge of a jungle of central Africa, to have thrust upon me the mission of expounding what I took to be the innermost propulsion of the United States, while supervising, in that barbaric tropic, the unloading of drums of case oil flowing out of the inexhaustible wilderness of America." The epiphany "demanded" that he study "the beginning of a beginning. Once I was back in the security of a graduate school, it seemed obvious that I had to commence with the Puritan migration."{{cite book |last1=Miller |first1=Perry |title=Errand into the Wilderness |date=1996 |publisher=Belknap Press of Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge, MA |isbn=9780674261556 |pages=vii-viii |edition=11. print}}

Perry Miller received his baccalaureate in 1928 and his Ph.D. in 1931, both from the University of Chicago, where he was a member of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity.{{cite web |title=Perry Miller |url=https://www.gf.org/fellows/perry-miller/ |website=John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation... |language=en}}

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Miller began teaching at Harvard University in 1931. In 1942, Miller resigned his post at Harvard to join the United States Army and was stationed in Great Britain for the duration of World War II, where he worked for the Office of Strategic Services. Miller may have been instrumental in creating the Office of Strategic Services and certainly he worked for the Psychological Warfare Division for the duration of the war.Middlekauff, "Perry Miller," pp 168–9 He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1943.{{Cite web |title=Perry Gilbert Eddy Miller |url=https://www.amacad.org/person/perry-gilbert-eddy-miller |access-date=2023-01-12 |website=American Academy of Arts & Sciences |language=en}}

After 1945, Miller returned to teaching at Harvard. He also offered courses at the Harvard Extension School.{{Citation | title = The Gates Unbarred: A History of University Extension at Harvard, 1910–2009| year = 2010 | author = Shinagel, Michael | publisher = Harvard University Press | isbn = 978-0674051355|page=52}}

Miller wrote book reviews and articles in The Nation and The American Scholar. In his biography of Jonathan Edwards, published in 1949, Miller argued that Edwards was actually an artist working in the only medium available to him in the 18th century American frontier, namely that of religion and theology. His posthumously published The Life of the Mind in America, for which he received a Pulitzer Prize, was the first installment of a projected 10-volume series.Kelly Boyd, Encyclopedia of historians and historical writing: Volume 2 (1999) p. 818 Miller spent a year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey on a Guggenheim Fellowship and also taught in Japan for a year. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1956.{{Cite web |title=APS Member History |url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=Perry+Miller&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=&year-max=&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced |access-date=2023-01-12 |website=search.amphilsoc.org}}

In 1987, Edmund S. Morgan claimed that Miller, his undergraduate tutor and graduate dissertation advisor, was an atheist, like himself.{{cite journal |last1=Courtwright |first1=David T. |title=Fifty Years of American History: An Interview with Edmund S. Morgan |journal=The William and Mary Quarterly |date=1987 |volume=44 |issue=2 |pages=336–369 |doi=10.2307/1939669 |jstor=1939669 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1939669 |issn=0043-5597}}

Miller's attempts to analyze religious attitudes and ideas in Colonial America and later set a new standard for intellectual historiography.Stanford J. Searl Jr., "Perry Miller As Artist: Piety and Imagination in the New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century," Early American Literature, Dec 1977, Vol. 12 Issue 3, pp 221-33 Historians report that Miller's work has influenced the work of later historians on topics ranging from Puritan studies to discussions of narrative theory. In his most famous book, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (1939), Miller adopted a cultural approach to illuminate the worldview of the Puritans, unlike previous historians who employed psychological and economic explanations of their beliefs and behavior.Robert Middlekauff, "Perry Miller," in Marcus Cunliffe and Robin W. Winks, eds., Pastmasters pp 167-90

A maid found Perry Miller alone and not breathing at Harvard University, on December 10, 1963. The coroner's report indicated that Miller had been dead for at least twenty-four hours prior to the maid's grim discovery. Miller, according to Abram Van Engen,{{cite web |title=Bio |url=https://www.abramvanengen.com/about-1 |website=Abram Van Engen}} was a "committed liberal" in recovery for alcoholism. His physician had limited the libations to two drinks per day. After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Miller " 'got drunk and stayed that way' ", perishing from acute hemorrhagic pancreatitis in his room at Leverett House or, as Van Engen puts it, "...kicked out of his house by his wife, he lived alone in a Harvard dorm room and eventually drank himself to death." Rumors circulated, and continue to persist, that "Miller died in his dorm room surrounded by empty bottles of liquor. Multiple students described it as a suicide."{{cite book |last1=Van Engen |first1=Abram C. |title=City on a hill: a history of American exceptionalism |date=2020 |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven |isbn=9780300252316 |pages=251-253}} In contrast, The New York Times, within hours of police confirmation that the body was indeed the corpse of Perry Miller, reported that he "had died apparently from a stroke."{{cite news |title=TimesMachine: Tuesday December 10, 1963 - NYTimes.com |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1963/12/10/issue.html |work=The New York Times |language=en}} Especially within the Harvard community, "his death was mourned as a loss to the intellectual landscape in the U.S."Alan Heimert, "Perry Miller: An Appreciation," Harvard Review, II, no. 2 (Winter-Spring 1964), 30–48

The Congo River "epiphany" from Perry Miller's early life produced much posthumous scrutiny by scholars and media outlets. In 1974, Elizabeth Miller, Perry Miller's widow, informed Stanford Searl, Jr., a Quaker disciple of her late husband's writings, that, " 'as for the Congo episode...yes, there is a kind of truth in Perry’s romantic reference in Errand. But Perry, who was a writer, was in part creating, after the fact, an effective anecdote as well as an explanation of why his own errand had been undertaken.' "{{cite book |last1=Graziano |first1=Michael |title=Errand into the Wilderness of Mirrors: Religion and the History of the CIA |date=2021 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-76754-3 |page=9 |language=en}}{{cite web |last1=Maizlish |first1=Rivka |title=Rethinking the Origin of American Studies (with help from Perry Miller) {{!}} Society for US Intellectual History |url=https://s-usih.org/2013/11/rethinking-the-origin-of-american-studies-with-help-from-perry-miller/ |date=14 November 2013}} Five years later, in his introduction to a collection of Perry Miller's essays, Searl publicly responded to Elizabeth Miller, pointing out that "what is of significance is not how it came about---whether it was indeed vouchsafed or not." In fact, according to Searl, Walter J. Ong had confirmed that Perry Miller frequently claimed such epiphanies because " 'it was the kind of thing he liked to remember.' " Searl then ascribed significance not to the veracity of the narrative itself, but to Perry Miller's intention of binding "the roles of actor and adventurer to the world of ideas."{{cite book |last1=Searl, Jr. |first1=Stanford J. |title=The Responsibility of Mind in a Civilization of Machines: Essays by Perry Miller |date=1979 |publisher=University of Massachusetts Press |isbn=978-0-87023-281-7 |page=2 |language=en}}

Historians have since critiqued Perry Miller's account of the Congo episode. The autobiographical passage, whether substantiated or not, revealed twentieth-century "U.S. investments in empire"; {{cite book |last1=Vleck |first1=Jenifer Van |title=Empire of the Air: Aviation and the American Ascendancy |date=1 November 2013 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-72732-8 |page=134 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yV10AQAAQBAJ |language=en}} checked "off every box in the colonial rulebook";{{cite book |last1=Goyal |first1=Yogita |title=The Cambridge Companion to Transnational American Literature |date=15 February 2017 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-107-08520-6 |page=53 |language=en}} foregrounded "the ways in which imperialism has been simultaneously formative and disavowed in the foundational discourse of American studies";{{cite book |last1=Kaplan |first1=Amy |last2=Pease |first2=Donald E. |title=Cultures of United States Imperialism |date=1993 |publisher=Duke University Press |isbn=978-0-8223-1413-4 |pages=5–12 |language=en}} and, intentionally or unintentionally, depicted "an empire in the ascendant; moreover, an empire which would govern the conditions in which he worked and which might well expect a particular self-image to be upheld by its chroniclers...this has led some to reinforce the erroneous belief that Miller was a 'safe' historian, persuaded of the righteousness of America and the justice of its actions."{{cite journal |last1=Guyatt |first1=Nicholas |title="An Instrument of National Policy": Perry Miller and the Cold War |journal=Journal of American Studies |date=2002 |volume=36 |issue=1 |pages=107–149 |doi=10.1017/S002187580100665X |s2cid=145703312 |issn=0021-8758}}

American Studies specialist Paul Lauter has written and lectured on formulating pedagogical approaches to Perry Miller's "epiphany" in the Congo. According to Lauter, his students "...were suspicious of [Amy] Kaplan's revelations of the implications of Miller's starting point for American Studies...'Isn't she really saying he's a racist?' one student memorably protested. I tried to deflect attention from Miller's psychology and toward the implications of the narrative for the early shape of American Studies...the discussion led us to apply Jameson's rubric---'always historicize'...examining Miller in this way enabled us to understand how what we designated as 'American Studies' was not fixed by history into a particular profile but like other phenomenon was historically rooted in the starting points particular scholars in particular circumstances at particular times might recognize as different."{{cite book |last1=Duclos-Orsello |first1=Elizabeth A. |last2=Entin |first2=Joseph B. |last3=Hill |first3=Rebecca |title=Teaching American Studies: The State of the Classroom as State of the Field |date=17 August 2021 |publisher=University Press of Kansas |isbn=978-0-7006-3237-4 |pages=35–36 |language=en}}

At Harvard, he directed numerous Ph.D. dissertations. His most notable student was fellow Pulitzer winner Edmund Morgan, although Bernard Bailyn cited him as an influence, albeit a fractious one.Perry Miller, Errand into the wilderness (1956) Page ix

Margaret Atwood dedicated The Handmaid's Tale to Perry Miller. Atwood had studied with Miller while attending Radcliffe before women were admitted to Harvard.{{Cite news|url = https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-03-04-ca-2834-story.html|title = 'The Handmaid's Tale' : If Puritans Ruled . . . Atwood's Story on Screen|last = PEARY|first = GERALD|date = March 4, 1990|newspaper = Los Angeles Times|language = en-US|issn = 0458-3035|access-date = March 25, 2016}}{{Cite web|url = https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/03/26/specials/mccarthy-atwood.html|title = Book Review|website = www.nytimes.com|access-date = March 25, 2016}}

• 1933. Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, 1630-1650{{Cite book|url = https://archive.org/details/orthodoxyinmassa009923mbp|title = Orthodoxy in massachusetts 1630 1950|last = Perry Miller|date = January 1, 1933|publisher = Beacon Press}}
• 1939. The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century{{Cite web|url = https://www.questia.com/read/58415096|archive-url = https://archive.today/20130201120225/http://www.questia.com/read/58415096|url-status = dead|archive-date = February 1, 2013|title = The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century - 1954, Page iii by Perry Miller,a|website =}}
• 1949. Jonathan Edwards{{Cite book|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=OSYHkH9K170C|title = Jonathan Edwards|last = Miller|first = Perry|date = January 1, 2005|publisher = U of Nebraska Press|isbn = 0803283075|language = en}}
• 1950. The Transcendentalists: An Anthology{{Cite book|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=vhPUUOh5NgYC|title = The Transcendentalists: An Anthology|last = Miller|first = Perry|date = January 1, 1950|publisher = Harvard University Press|isbn = 9780674903333|language = en}}
• 1953. The New England Mind: From Colony to Province{{Cite book|url = https://archive.org/details/newenglandmindfr009904mbp|title = The New England Mind From Colony To Province|last = Perry Miller|date = January 1, 1953|publisher = Beacon Press}}
• 1953. Roger Williams: His Contribution to the American Tradition{{Cite book|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=NuF4AAAAMAAJ|title = Roger Williams: his contribution to the American tradition|last = Miller|first = Perry|date = January 1, 1970|publisher = Atheneum|language = en}}
• 1954. Religion and Freedom of Thought
• 1954. American Thought: Civil War to World War I{{Cite book|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=HJ0OAQAAMAAJ|title = American thought: Civil War to World War I|last = Miller|first = Perry|date = January 1, 1954|publisher = Rinehart|isbn = 9780030091759|language = en}}
• 1956. Errand into the Wilderness{{Cite web|url = http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674261556|title = Errand into the Wilderness — Perry Miller - Harvard University Press|website = www.hup.harvard.edu|access-date = March 25, 2016}}
• 1956. The American Puritans (editor) {{Cite web|url = https://www.questia.com/read/1330113|title = The American Puritans: Their Prose and Poetry - 1956, Page iii|website = |access-date = September 8, 2017|archive-date = February 29, 2008|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080229075337/http://www.questia.com/read/1330113|url-status = dead}}
• 1957. The American Transcendentalists: Their Prose and Poetry{{Cite book|url = https://archive.org/details/americantranscen00mill|url-access = registration|title = The American transcendentalists, their prose and poetry|last = Miller|first = Perry|date = January 1, 1957|publisher = Doubleday|language = en}}
• 1957. The Raven and the Whale: Poe, Melville and the New York Literary Scene{{Cite web|url = https://prezi.com/9p4zr8xrqpyq/perry-miller-the-raven-and-the-whale/|title = Perry Miller: The Raven and the Whale|website = prezi.com|access-date = March 25, 2016}}
• 1958. Consciousness in Concord: The Text of Thoreau's Hitherto "Lost Journal"
• 1961. The Legal Mind in America: From Independence to the Civil War
• 1965. Life of the Mind in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War {{Cite book|url = http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=acls;cc=acls;view=toc;idno=heb00005.0001.001|title = The life of the mind in America: from the Revolution to the Civil War : books one through three|last = Miller|first = Perry|date = January 1, 1965}}
• 1967. Nature's Nation{{Cite book|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=JUh1AAAAMAAJ|title = Nature's nation|last = Miller|first = Perry|date = January 1, 1967|publisher = Belknap Press of Harvard University Press|isbn = 9780674605503|language = en}}

{{Reflist|30em}}

• Butts, Francis T. "The Myth of Perry Miller," American Historical Review, June 1982, Vol. 87 Issue 3, pp 665–94; Seeks to rehabilitate Miller's interpretation of Puritanism
• Fuller, Randall. "Errand into the Wilderness: Perry Miller as American Scholar," American Literary History, Spring 2006, Vol. 18 Issue 1, pp 102–128
• Guyatt, Nicholas. "'An Instrument of National Policy': Perry Miller and the Cold War," Journal of American Studies, April 2002, Vol. 36 Issue 1, pp 107–49
• Hollinger, David A. "Perry Miller and Philosophical History," History and Theory, Vol. 7, issue 2, 1968, 189-202
• Heimert, Alan. "Perry Miller: An Appreciation," Harvard Review, II, no. 2 (Winter-Spring 1964), 30–48
• Middlekauff, Robert. "Perry Miller," in Marcus Cunliffe and Robin W. Winks, eds., Pastmasters (1969) pp 167–90
• Reinitz, Richard. "Perry Miller and Recent American Historiography," Bulletin of the British Association of American Studies, 8 (June 1964), 27-35
• Searl Jr., Stanford J. "Perry Miller As Artist: Piety and Imagination in the New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century," Early American Literature, Dec 1977, Vol. 12 Issue 3, pp 221–33
• Tucker, Bruce. "Early American Intellectual History after Perry Miller," Canadian Review of American Studies, 1982, Vol. 13 Issue 2, pp 145–157

{{PulitzerPrize HistoryAuthors 1951–1975}}

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