The transition from high modernism to late modernism is one marked out, to some extent, by the institutional success of the former. Wyndham Lewis, we have seen, took part in the revolution that brought high modernism into being; yet it was the success of this ‘new fashion in art’ and its perceived failure to produce lasting change which sparked his decades-long critique of its shortcomings. Likewise, Laura Riding, too late for the successful institutionalization of the new, felt herself alone in lamenting the closed structure of the literary field – writing a series of works against premature literary history, group politics, and the inflation of literary celebrity gossip. Henry Miller can similarly be drawn into their company, though few critics these days seek to find his place in literary modernism. We forget that Tropic of Cancer, published in 1934 by an author only three years younger than T. S. Eliot, brought Miller almost immediately into the literary spotlight. For a time it appeared he would gracefully enter the modernist canon, especially when writers with influence over literary institutions – including Eliot and Ezra Pound – took favourable notice.