Marilyn Monroe’s Personally Owned Copy of Man Against Himself

A copy of Karl A. Menninger’s Man Against Himself (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1938) from the personal library of Marilyn Monroe, bearing a Christie’s auction bookplate affixed to the inside front cover. Particularly striking are Marilyn’s markings in the opening chapter, where she underlined and noted passages addressing suicide. Additional annotations appear throughout the volume, offering rare and intimate insight into her private reading and intellectual engagement with the text.

This book is photographed with Marilyn in her Beverly Carlton Hotel studio apartment, and also her apartment on Doheny Drive in Hollywood.

The Library of Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe’s personal library comprised more than 400 volumes spanning an extraordinary range of subjects, a testament to both her intelligence and her deeply curious nature. For those who truly know Monroe, this breadth comes as no surprise. These were the books of a serious and inquisitive reader. Literature, art, drama, biography, poetry, politics, history, theology, philosophy, and psychology lined the shelves of her home.

Among the first editions were her own copies of defining twentieth-century works, including Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and William Styron’s This House on Fire. From Tolstoy to Twain, her library embraced the great voices of world literature, with titles such as The Great Gatsby, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, James Joyce’s Dubliners, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and Albert Camus’s The Fall. Alongside these classics were books on gardening, multiple Bibles, and beloved children’s stories, including her personal copy of The Little Engine That Could.

The volumes in Monroe’s library remained in their original bindings, most commonly cloth or paper wrappers, and were preserved in good condition. Many retain intimate traces of her engagement with the text, including pencil markings, annotations, inserted bookmarks, and loose slips of paper.

Every book sold from Marilyn Monroe’s library at the landmark 1999 Christie’s auction bears a posthumous bookplate identifying its provenance. Proceeds from the sale benefited Literacy Partners, extending Monroe’s lifelong commitment to reading and self-education beyond her own lifetime.