Henry Miller Biography and List of Works

American writer whose autobiographical novels had a liberating influence on mid-20th century literature. Because of the frank portrayals of sexuality, Miller's major novels have been banned in several countries. In the 1960s Miller became one of the most widely read US authors. In his autobiographical works Miller created a myth out of his own life, about a free-spirited, penniless American writer who has a number of affairs and spends his time between New York and Paris.

"The bulk of my readers, I have often observed, fall into two distinct groups: in the one group those who claim to be repelled or disgusted by the liberal dosage of sex, and in the other those who are delighted to find that this element form such a large ingredient."
(from The World of Sex, 1965)

Miller was born in New York, N.Y, as the only child of German-American working-class parents. He attended the college of the City of New York and left after two months. Miller worked briefly for a cement company. He travelled throughout South West USA and Alaska with money, which was intended to finance him through Cornell. In 1913 he went to work at his father's tailor's shop. In 1917 he married and became a father.

From 1920 to 1924 Miller worked at the Western Union Telegraph Company, but then left his family and lived a bohemian life with June Mansfield Smith, a Broadway dancer. Their relationship inspired Miller's early novels MOLOCH and CRAZY COCK (the latter published in 1991 posthumously). Miller later returned to this period of his life in his trilogy THE ROSY CRUCIFICATION. Miller did not seriously begin to write until he was 40. In 1930 he moved to France for nine years. His first books were published almost exclusively by the Obelisk Press, Paris.

"If it [Sexus] was no good, it was true; if it was not artistic, it was sincere; if it was in bad taste, it was on the side of life."

During this time he came under the influence of surrealism, Céline, and the literary circle, which included Lawrence Durrell and Anaïs Nin. He created sensation with his classic first works, TROPIC OF CANCER (1934) and TROPIC OF CAPRICORN (1936), which offered a vivid picture of bohemian life in Paris and New York. The books were banned for nearly three decades in the U.S., before decision by the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their literary value. The triangular relationship between Miller, June and Nin formed the basis for several of Nin's journals and the film Henry and June (1990). Miller produced with Nin and Durrell the magazine The Booster. Miller's other works from this period include BLACK SPRING (1936), based on his childhood's experiences in Brooklyn, and THE COLOSSUS OF MAROUSSI (1941), inspired by his visit to Greece in 1939.

With the outbreak of World War II Miller returned to the USA. He moved to California in 1942 and lived from 1947 in Big Sur on California coast. In 1957 Miller was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He wrote prolifically, revisited Europe numerous times and painted watercolours. Miller died in Pacific Palisades on June 7, 1980. He was married five times. In 1967 he married a young Japanese cabaret singer, Hoki Tokuda. She ran a Tokyo nightclub called 'Tropic of Cancer'.

"Henry was so enthralled by women that he sought to demystify their mysterious parts through the violent verbal magic of his books. The violence is rooted in a sense of self-abnegation and humiliation before them. He is, as the Freudians would say, counterphobic.''
(Erica Jong in The Devil at Large, 1993)

THE AIR-CONDITIONED NIGHTMARE (1945), a critical view of the United States, QUIET DAYS IN CLICHY (1956), and THE ROSY CRUSIFIXION trilogy (1965), which traced the stages by which the hero-narrator becomes a writer. In 1952 appeared Miller's study of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, whose rebelliousness attracted the author. Miller's works helped to push back the boundaries of censorship in the 1950s with D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover and William Burroughs's The Naked Lunch. He also influenced the Beat Movement writers.

For further reading: Happy Rock, ed. by B. Porter (1945); Art and Outrage by L. Durrell and A. Perlès (1959); Henry Miller by A.K. Baxter (1961); Henry Miller and the Critics, ed. by G. Wickers (1963); Henry Miller by K. Widmer (1963); Henry Miller by G. Wickers (1966); Henry Miller: Colossus of One by K.C. Dick (1967); The Mind and Art of Henry Miller by W.A. Gordon (1967); The Literature of Silence by I. Hassan (1968); Form and Image in the Fiction of Henry Miller by J.A. Nelson (1970); Genius and Lust by Norman Mailer (1976); Orpheus in Brooklyn by B. Mathieu (1976); Always Merry and Bright: The Life of Henry Miller by J. Martin (1978); Henry Miller - A Life by Robert Ferguson (1991); The Devil at Large by Erica Jong (1993); Conversations With Henry Miller, ed. by Frank L. Kersnowski, Alice Hughes (1994) - Note: Film Henry and June (1990), dir. by Philip Kaufman, starring Fred Ward and Uma Thurman, Maria de Medeiros

TROPIC OF CANCER, (1934)
A DEVIL IN PARADISE, (1993)
HENRY MILLER AND JAMES LAUGHLIN, (1995)