Researching Walter Miller

Miller joined Southern League club West Ham United for the 1908–09 season and scored in his second outing for the club. He was an ever-present during that season's FA Cup run, which culminated in defeat at Newcastle United in a third-round replay on 24 February 1909.

In 1909–10, he finished as top scorer for Blackpool in his first season with the club, with fourteen goals in all competitions.

A pioneering figure of modern Jules Verne studies, Miller's 1965 Washington Square Press edition of Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea included both the first unabridged English translation of the novel and the first scholarly discussion of what he termed the problem of "the two Jules Vernes." European readers, Miller observed,

Miller's analysis of the abridgment and mistranslation of Verne, and his call for accurate and complete English renderings, initiated a major reassessment by English-speaking critics of Verne's importance, and is credited with fostering the publication of numerous new English editions of Verne and the emergence of Verne studies as a serious academic discipline in the US and UK. Miller's scholarly editions of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1976), From the Earth to the Moon (1978), and (with Frederick Paul Walter) The Meteor Hunt (2006) were the first annotated editions of those novels in any language. His preface to the first English translation of Verne's The Mighty Orinoco (2002) has been described as the best critical commentary on this novel in French or English. A founding member of the North American Jules Verne Society and of the Editorial Board of Verniana – Jules Verne Studies / Etudes Jules Verne , and an active contributor to the online discussion group Jules Verne Forum , in his later years Miller was a valued mentor to Verne scholars in the US, UK, Europe, and Asia.

Miller died before learning that the North American Jules Verne Society had decided to dedicate the fourth volume in its Palik Series of first-time Verne translations to him; the book dedicated to Miller, The Count of Chanteleine: A Tale of the French Revolution. Miller's last essay on Verne had appeared posthumously in the first volume in series, The Marriage of a Marquis, published in 2011.

Miller was born in Brooklyn, New York.

He rode in his first race at age 14. At the age of 16, he won 388 races, a record not broken until Anthony DeSpirito did it in 1952. Between the years 1905 and 1908 Miller won 1,094 races from 4,336 mounts for an extraordinary 25.2 winning percentage. He led the U.S. in victories in both 1906 and 1907.

In 1906, he won the Preakness on Whimsical. He also won the Travers Stakes, Alabama Stakes, Champagne Stakes, Saratoga Special Stakes, and Brooklyn Handicap.

He was the United States National Riding Champion in 1906 and 1907.

In his career, more than half the time his horse finished "in the money". On July 29, 1906, Walter Miller rode five winners on a single racecard at Brighton Beach Race Course. He set a record by riding eight consecutive winners, over a two-day period at Benning Race Track. His career ended in the United States after he gained weight as a late teenager. In 1909 and 1910 he rode primarily in Australia and Europe where weight restrictions were less stringent.

Walter Miller was inducted into the U.S. Racing Racing Hall of Fame in 1955, into the Jockey Hall of Fame in 1957, and into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1983.

During the 1908–09 season, while with the Brantford Indians of the OPHL, Miller and the Indians were involved in a train accident outside of Guelph on January 14, 1909 where Miller suffered a season ending hand injury (cut off finger) when the rear coach of the Grand Trunk Railway passenger train they were traveling with ran into a ditch and overturned.