Miller, Henry Valentine (1891-1980)

US writer. From 1930 to 1940 he lived a bohemian life in Paris, where he wrote his fictionalized, sexually explicit, autobiographical trilogy Tropic of Cancer (1934), Black Spring (1936), and Tropic of Capricorn (1938). They were banned in the USA and England until the 1960s.

Born in New York City, Miller settled in Big Sur, California, in 1944 and wrote the autobiographical The Rosy Crucifixion trilogy, consisting of Sexus 1949, Plexus 1949, and Nexus 1957 (published as a whole in the USA 1965). Inspired by surrealism, Miller was a writer of exuberant and comic prose fuelled by anarchist passion, and was later adopted as a guru by the followers of the Beat Generation. His other works include The Colossus of Maroussi 1941, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare 1945, a vitriolic and apocalyptic vision of American culture, and The Time of the Assassins 1956, a portrait of the French poet Rimbaud.