Author and co-founder of independent publisher dies
Anita Miller, who brought hundreds of literary works into print as the co-founder of the independent publishing company Academy Chicago and who was embroiled in a bitter legal battle with the family of writer John Cheever, died Aug. 4 at a nursing facility in Chicago. She was 91.
A son, Bruce Joshua Miller, confirmed the death but did not cite a cause.
Miller was a college English professor before she and her husband, Jordan Miller, launched Academy Press (later called Academy Chicago Publishers) in 1975. Their first book, “A Guide to Non-Sexist Children’s Books,” by Judith Adell and Hilary Dole Klein, sold out its initial press run of 5,000 in less than four months and went on to sell more than 40,000 copies.
“We thought publishing was simple, just publish a good book and people will buy it,” Miller said. She soon learned otherwise. “Over the years,” she told the Chicago Tribune in 1994, “I have made every mistake in the book and quite a few outside of it too.”
On the rise
Nonetheless, through a combination of literary taste, determination and luck, the Millers built Academy Chicago into one of the most enduring and successful small presses in the country. Drawing on Miller’s expertise in 19th-century literature, the company developed a backlist that included many classic works that had gone out of print — a common practice today but then relatively unknown.
The Millers republished books by British writers Arnold Bennett and Walter Pater and helped revive interest in French novelist George Sand. (Miller joked that Academy Chicago could be called “a house built on Sand.”)
Other top-selling books included a series of mystery novels by a pseudonymous British writer known as Leo Bruce and a 1982 espionage thriller set in Russia, “Murder at the Red October,” by first-time novelist Anthony Olcott.
Miller, who was president and editorial director of Academy Chicago, also “rescued” many out-of-print books by female writers, including Sylvia Townsend Warner, Olive Schreiner and Mary Wilkins Freeman. A 1949 historical novel by Dutch writer Hella S. Haasse, “In a Dark Wood Wandering” — translated into English by Miller — sold 50,000 copies after Academy Chicago published it in 1989.
Wide range
Other entries in the company’s eclectic catalogue included biographies, travel books and transcripts of the testimony of Anita Hill during the 1991 Senate confirmation hearings of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.
“It’s an old-fashioned approach,” Miller said in 2001. “We’re not looking for anything specific. We’re looking for something good.”
Over the years, the Millers published more than 500 books at Academy Chicago, but none of them got as much attention of the one they didn’t publish: a collection of 68 short stories by Cheever, originally scheduled for release in 1988.
An archivist tracked down the stories, which had not been included in a 1978 collection that won the Pulitzer Prize, and offered them to the Millers. The 500-page collection would have been the most important literary work in Academy Chicago’s history, with an initial press run of 100,000 copies. Paperback rights were sold for more than $225,000.
The Millers paid Cheever’s widow, Mary, an advance of $750, with another $750 due on publication. Royalties to Mary Cheever were expected to reach into six figures.
Just before the book was to come out, however, the Cheever family sought to block its publication, saying the advance was too small and that some of the stories were of inferior quality.