Structure

The Lives of Lee Miller is organized into 11 numbered and titled chapters. The chapters appear in the following order and with the following titles: Chapter 1, “Early Years, 1907-1929,” Chapter 2, “Photography in Surrealist Paris, 1929-1932,” Chapter 3, “Photography in Fashionable New York, 1932,-1934,” Chapter 4, “Egypt and First Marriage, 1934-1937,” Chapter 5, “Escape from Egypt, 1937-1939,” Chapter 6, “‘Grim Glory’: Wartime London, 1939-1944,” Chapter 7, “Lee’s War, 1944-1945,” Chapter 8, “Spinning It Out: Austria, 1945,” Chapter 9, “The Last Waltz: Eastern Europe, 1945-1946,” Chapter 10, “Winged Serpents: Married Life in Hampstead and Sussex, 1946-1956,” and Chapter 11, “Food, Friends and Faraway Places, 1956-1977.”

The titles and organization of these chapters abide by a linear structure. This means that the biography takes its inspiration from chronological time. The author has organized Lee’s story according to each era of her life, and traces a specific facet of her experience during each of the denoted timestamps. In an overarching...