Book cover printing proof for The Perfumed Savage

Edgar Miller
1932
Lithograph on paper
L 15.5, W 22.25 cm

Throughout Edgar Miller's career he lent his artistic and design skills to a variety of commissioned illustration and graphic design projects. One such project was for The Perfumed Savage, a book of intellectual, erotic feminist poetry by Estelle Brinkman, published by the short-lived, Chicago-based Gutenberg Press on January 1, 1933. The collection of poems celebrated female sexual liberation and power—at the time radical and bohemian ideas for the American Midwest. Throughout the early parts of his career Miller had steeped himself in the bohemian artistic and literary circles of early modern period Chicago.

Miller’s cover design depicts a highly stylized woman, semi-nude in a kaftan. This printing proof shows a part of the process of book jacket design that Miller would have been well-acquainted with, and is likely the only copy of such a proof to remain in existence. Finding a copy of The Perfumed Savage today is almost as equally difficult to do, as copies with Miller's cover design were a limited edition.

A short announcement from 1933 in the Decatur Herald, where Estelle Fritter Brinkman grew up, quotes the publisher’s press release: "A flame of pagan madness, leaping triumphantly out of its gray walls of restraint, sets these verses aglow–phrases that gleam like burnished gold are woven with dancing scarlet patterns into a mad, sensuous tapestry of unforgettable delight."