Henry Miller Biography

Writer

Henry Miller grew up in New York, but spent many years in Europe, where his autobiographical and sexually explicit novels Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn were published in the 1930s. They were banned in the U.K. and the U.S. While in Paris he began a famous affair with writer Anais Nin, who documented their exploits in her diaries. Between the 1940s and 1960s Miller settled in Big Sur, California, exhibited water colors and wrote, most notably publishing the trilogy known as The Rosy Crucifixion (the novels Sexus, Plexus and Nexus). His early novels were finally published in the U.K. and the U.S. in the 1960s, and Miller became a pop culture icon.

Extra credit: Miller appears briefly as himself in the movie Reds, filmed the year he died.