Marilyn Monroe's Expansive Personal Library Highlights Her Little-Known Reading Habits

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

There are many celebrities we can think of today who love to read. Reese Witherspoon and Oprah Winfrey, for example, even have their own book clubs, which may have you wondering: Does Reese Witherspoon really read all of her Reese's Book Club picks? The answer is yes, she does. But there's another big celebrity who loved reading, and in fact, had their own personal library filled with classics and biographies of important people. That celebrity is Marilyn Monroe. Monroe was an actress and model, known for her good looks and voluptuous figure. But, there was so much more to her than what met the eye. Including her literary tastes. 

Monroe loved reading, and her personal library contained over 400 books. Some of the books in her collection included "The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemingway, "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky. She even surrounded herself with literary figures. For example, she was married to playwright Arthur Miller. Gale Crowther recently published a book about Monroe's love for reading, called "Marilyn and Her Books." In it, he wrote (via New York Times), "It is worth considering that much of Marilyn's reading was her attempt to 'better' herself."

Unfortunately, Marilyn Monroe's life was cut short when she passed away from a drug overdose in 1962 at the young age of 36. After her death, her books were moved to a storage unit in Manhattan. Lee Strasberg, her acting coach, inherited most of Monroe's estate, and when he passed away, the books were passed on to his wife. In 1999, she enlisted Christie's auction house to sell off the remainder of Monroe's items, including her books.

We can't help but wonder what Monroe would have accomplished had she lived a full life. Her future dreams had a Shakespearean angle, with her hoping to one day play Juliet Capulet and Lady Macbeth; she even thought of launching a Marilyn Monroe Shakespeare Festival. Unfortunately, we won't see those things come to fruition, but Monroe's legacy undeniably lives on. Gale Crowther also spoke to British Vogue, saying that "[Monroe's] literary life ... is crucial to who she was and how we understand her." Perhaps we can begin to understand and feel closer to her by reading some of the books that were in her personal library.