Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1928 Vienna, Austria

Died: 2020 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1938

Other name/s: Else Horovitz, Elly Horovitz

Biography

Elly Miller (née Else Horovitz) was born into a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria on 5 March 1928; her father, Béla Horovitz, together with Ludwig Goldscheider, was co-founder of the art book publisher Phaidon Verlag. Following the Anschluss (Nazi annexation of Austria) in March 1938, Béla (who was in London on business), instructed Elly, and her older brother, Joseph (who was to become a distinguished composer in exile), to leave Vienna with their grandmother, aunt and her baby son, and take the train to Italy. From there, they were taken to Zurich, Switzerland, and then, Elly (aged ten) and Joseph (aged eleven), continued alone to Belgium, where the family was reunited and reached England soon afterwards. When asked in a subsequent interview to describe her identity, Miller answered that she was an ‘Austrian-born, Jewish, British citizen’ (Obituary, The Times, 26 September 2020).

Elly and Joseph attended the Regent’s Park School in Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead - known as Schindler’s School, it was founded by Dr Bruno Schindler and his wife, Alma in 1933, mainly for Jewish refugee children from Germany. In 1939 the family moved to Bath, returning to London in 1940, then settling in Oxford in the autumn of the same year, where Elly attended Oxford High School. In 1944, when she was 16, her father gave her several draft chapters of a proposed book entitled The Story of Art. After reading the typescript she called it ‘absorbing’, adding: ‘Publish it!’ Six years later E. H. Gombrich’s book went on sale to great acclaim, becoming a global bestseller - still in print today. After reading PPE at Somerville College, Oxford, she returned to London with the family and briefly worked as a researcher at The Times for a history of the newspaper.

After a brief spell at Oxford University Press in New York, she returned to England in 1949, began working at Phaidon (now Phaidon Press), which Horovitz and Goldscheider had re-established in London. She worked alongside Goldscheider and soon married Cambridge science graduate Harvey Miller. After her father's death in 1955, the Millers took over the running of the company before selling it in 1967 to Encyclopaedia Britannica. Soon afterwards, they set up their own publishing company, Harvey Miller Publishers, specialising in art and medicine. This allowed Elly to pursue her passion for medieval and renaissance art, which Goldscheider had dismissed, nurturing authors at the cutting edge of what, at that time, was a young discipline. With scholars including Jonathan Alexander, John Beckwith, and Nigel Morgan, the publishers’ list rapidly became celebrated for leading research in medieval studies, especially of illuminated manuscripts. All her authors recognised that Elly brought a personal interest to their work, bringing their ideas to life through her expertise in design and illustrative book production. She worked closely with leading photographers and in one case published an entirely visual resource, the Courtauld Institute Illustration Archives, covering an array of architecture and sculpture of the medieval and Renaissance periods.

After her husband died in 2008, Elly developed their client list, continuing long-term projects as well as commemorative volumes for the 900th anniversary of Westminster Abbey and the 500th anniversary of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. Miller also wrote verse, composing songs and accompanying herself on the piano. Her witty verse translations of the 19th-century German humourist and poet Wilhelm Busch, including the classic adventures of Max and Moritz, were published by Canongate as Mac and Murray. She left many unpublished translations of Busch’s more philosophical cautionary tales, as well as manuscripts of her own poems, including one entitled Isolation, written during the Covid-19 lockdown. Describing her legacy, one of her longest-standing authors, Professor Lucy Freeman Sandler, noted: 'Elly’s work on Harvey Miller publications, with their abundant illustrations, encouraged the study of illuminated manuscripts in depths never before achieved. Her concept of publication lives on in the innumerable, large-scale manuscript projects of the digital age, heralding not the end, but the beginning of a new era' (Elly Miller Obituary, The Times, 26 September 2020). In the summer of 2019 Elly took part in a panel discussion held at Sotheby's London as part of a programme of events coinciding with Brave New Visions, an exhibition designed to celebrate the contribution of refugee gallerists and art publishers to British visual culture. Elly Miller died in London, England in August 2020.

Related books

Anna Nyburg, Emigrés: The Transformation of Art Publishing in Britain (London: Phaidon Press, 2014)
Cherith Summers, ed., Brave New Visions: The émigrés who transformed the British art world (London: Sotheby's 2019)

Related organisations

Oxford University Press (employee)
The Times (researcher)
Harvey Miller Ltd (co-founder)
Phaidon Press (employee)
University of Oxford (student)

Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.

Elly Miller publisher