Miller was born in New York, N.Y. He attended the college of the City of New York and travelled througout 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, married in 1917 and become a father.

From 1920 to 1924 Miller worked at the Western Union Telegraph Company, but left then his family and lived a bohemian life with June Mansfield Smith. Their relationship inspired Miller's early novels MOLOCH and CRAZY COCK (the latter published in 1991 posthumously). However. He did not seriously begin to write until he was 40, and in 1930 he moved to France for nine years, where his first books were published.

During this time he came under the influence of surrealism, Céline, and bohemian 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 an vivid picture of bohemian life in Paris and New York. The books was banned for nearly three decades in the U.S., before decision by the U.S. Supreme Court upheld its literary value. In 1942 Miller moved to Caifornia and lived from 1947 in Big Sur on California coast. He died in Pasific Palisades on June 7, 1980.

Miller's other works include BLACK SPRING (1936), based on his childhood's experiences in Brooklyn, THE COLOSSUS OF MAROUSSI (1941), inspired by his visit to Greece in 1939, 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.

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 influenced also the Beat Movement writers.

"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." - HM

Note: Film Henry and June, dir. by Philip Kaufman, starring Frew Ward and Uma Thurman, depicted the relatioship between Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller

SELECTED WORKS:

• TROPIC OF CANCER, 1934 - film 1970, dir. Joseph Strick
• ALLER RETOUR, 1935
• BLACK SPRING, 1936
• MAX AND THE WHITE PHAGOCYTES, 1938
• TROPIC OF CAPRICORN, 1939
• THE COSMOLOGICAL EYE, 1939
• HAMLET, 1939
• THE WORLD OF SEX, 1940
• THE WISDOM OF THE HEART, 1941
• THE COLOSSUS OF MARUSSI, 1941
• SUNDAY AFTER THE WAR, 1944
• THE AIR-CONDITIONED NIGHTMARE, 1945
• REMEMBER TO REMEMBER, 1947
• THE SMILE AT THE ROOT OF THE LADDER, 1949
• SEXUS, 1949
• RIMBAUD, 1952
• THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE, 1952
• PLEXUS, 1952
• BIG SUR AND THE ORANGES OF HIERONYMUS BOSCH, 1955
• NIGHTS OF LOVE AND LAUGHTER, 1955
• ART AND OUTRAGE, 1959
• NEXUS, 1960
• STAND STILL LIKE THE HUMMINGBIRD, 1962
• JUST WILD ABOUT HARRY, 1963
• LETTERS TO ANAIS NIN, 1965
• ROSY CRUSIFIXION -trilogy (SEXUS, NEXUS, PLEXUS) , U.S. edition published as whole in 1965
• SELECTED PROSE, 1966
• QUIET DAYS IN CLICHY, 1966 film 1989, dir. Claude Chabrol - an elderly American writer recalls the sexual encounters of his youth
• MY LIFE AND TIMES, 1972
• LETTERS OF HENRY MILLR AND WALLACE FOWLIE, 1975
• BOOK OF FRIENDS, 1976-79
• DEAR, DEAR BRENDA, 1986 (with Brenda Venus)
• CRAZY COCK, 1991 (foreword by Erica Jong)
• Also various volumes of Miller's correspondence with Lawrence Durrell, Anais Ninand Wallace Fowlie have been published

For further reading: Genius and Lust by Norman Mailer (1976); Always Merry and Bright: The Life of Henry Miller by J. Martin (1978); Henry Miller - A Life by Robert Ferguson (1991)