Daphne Fraenkel - The Hamlet Heiress

When Michael Fraenkel died in 1957, he left a wife named Daphne. She would probably have been a minor footnote in the Miller life story--known simply as Michael Fraenkel's wife--but she made herself more pronounced later on, when her inherited rights to the Miller-Fraenkel correspondence Hamlet would cause Henry much frustration.

Daphne Moschos Gillam: she married a few times. I haven't read the rare Fraenkel biographical sketches, so my information on Daphne is limited. My sources are Michael Hargraves' introduction to the 1988 Fraenkel-less Capra edition of Hamlet, Henry Miller's preface to the same book, and the website t-bag.org (of unknown identity and uncertain credibility). The website includes a travel diary through Europe from 1975, during which the author stayed in Daphne's apartment for a night.

According to this website, in an entry dated August 1-8 [1975], Daphne lived at 27 Letterstone Road London SW6 Fulham:

"Daphne was born in Paris on April 8th 1900. Had flaming red hair and always wore purple. She had been married a couple of times. Taught school in Indiana. Witnessed World War I up close and personal, and said it was much worse than the second one [...] Daphne published and printed books for poets and playwrights. Carrefour Publications was what is called a vanity press [...] She typeset the books on a special typewriter. Then printed each sheet on a small printing press [...] Books were stacked in every square foot of her small apartment. Somehow I found room under the printing press for my sleeping bag."

When Michael Fraenkel died in 1957, Daphne inherited his work as well as Carrefour Press. Fraenkel had owned the rights to the Hamlet letters, so they passed to her as well. Miller held a grudge over not having rights to the project for many years. In 1962, Daphne used Carrefour to publish a fairly complete edition of Hamlet in tribute to Michael.

Miller declared: "I never received a copy of the book nor a penny in royalties." Daphne would eventually hand the rights over to Michael Hargraves for an American edition. When Hargraves presented Henry Miller with a copy of the book he never received, Henry signed it "To Michael Hargraves--the proud possessor of an unauthorized edition by me."

Hargraves was informed by Daphne that she disliked Henry. Henry harbored bad feelings about her as well. Hargraves: "In one letter to me he wrote, 'My feeling about Daphne hasn't changed over the years. I always regarded her as a rather astute horse's ass.' While in another letter he wrote: 'She cheated me out of royalties on that handsome British [1962] edition. More, she treated me in her blurbs [from the back of the book, taken from 1940s reviews] as if I were the fifth wheel on a wagon." Hargraves also notes that attempts had previsouly been made to publish an American edition, but Daphne thwarted them all.

Finally, A Short History Of Carrefour Press And Archives (1994) contains a letter from Henry to Daphne, dated June 16, 1957, in which he offers her condolances for Michael's death. (ref. only)