Henry Miller

Henry Valentine Miller was born December 26, 1891, and spent his early decades between New York City and Paris, the twin poles that would furnish his most radical work. He broke with conventional narrative and invented a hybrid: semi-autobiographical novels that folded social criticism, mysticism, stream of consciousness, and explicit sex into a single restless form. Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring, Tropic of Capricorn, and the three-volume The Rosy Crucifixion drew directly from his life in those cities, and all were banned in the United States until 1961. Beyond the novels he wrote travel mem…