Henry Valentine Miller was an American novel writer and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is distinctly always about and expressive of the real-life Henry Miller and yet is also fictional. His most characteristic books of this kind are Tropic of Cancer , Black Spring , and Tropic of Capricorn. He also created travel memoirs and essays of literary criticism and analysis.
Miller started life to tailor Heinrich Miller and Louise Marie Neiting, in the Yorkville section of Manhattan, New York City, of German Catholic heritage. As a child he lived at 662 Driggs Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, known in that time as the Fourteenth Ward. As a young man, he was active with the Socialist Party. [citation needed] He briefly for only one semester attended the City College of New York. Although he was an exceptional scholar[citation needed], he was willing neither to be anchored nor to submit to the traditional college system of education.
(Henry Miller photo #2)
His first wife was Beatrice Sylvas Wickens, whom he married in 1917. During 1928-29, Miller spent several months in Paris with his second wife, June Edith Smith. In 1930 he moved to Paris unaccompanied, and he continued to live there until the outbreak of World War Ii.
Henry Miller
