Ross Miller Edits Roth's Collected Works

The first two volumes of a new eight-volume edition of Philip Roth's collected fiction, edited by Prof. Ross Miller, will be published by The Library of America in September.

Each volume will include a chronology with commentary on Roth's life by Miller, professor of English and comparative literature, who is also writing the author's biography. Miller has been given unrestricted access to Roth's private papers and has consulted him while editing the collected works.

"Having a living writer allows me to check things with the best source available," he said, "as well as providing an occasion for him to talk to me critically about his work. In addition to being a great prose stylist, Philip Roth has a first-class mind. Editing him continues to be an extraordinary challenge and a wonderful pleasure."

Roth's inclusion in The Library of America is significant because most writers are not considered to be part of the literary canon until long after their death, Miller noted. "With Roth you have the very unusual occurrence of a writer getting stronger as he gets older. In the last 15 years he has published his best and most critically-acclaimed work. And he continues to write at the height of his powers."

Along with Eudora Welty and Saul Bellow, Roth is only the third writer to be published by The Library of America during the author's lifetime.

Miller considers Bellow and Roth to be the most important modern American writers since William Faulkner, whose work is also in the Library of America.

The first two volumes, covering Roth's work from 1959-1972, include Goodbye, Columbus , Letting Go , When She Was Good , and Portnoy's Complaint , and will give readers the opportunity to read definitive editions of the author's early works.

Miller expects that The Library of America editions will stimulate new critical interest in all of Roth's work. "I see these eight volumes as the best way to re-introduce a complicated but rewarding author to the reading public."

Roth, who lives in Connecticut , received an honorary degree from UConn in 2001.