Miller, Henry (1891-1980)

American writer, whose antipuritanical books did much to free the discussion of sexual subjects in American writing from both legal and social restrictions. Born in New York City, Miller tried a variety of jobs and attended the City College of New York briefly before going to Paris in 1930. He lived there for almost ten years, leading a bohemian existence that he wrote about in three loosely autobiographical erotic novels, Tropic of Cancer (1934), Black Spring (1936), and Tropic of Capricorn (1939). These books, prohibited in the United States on grounds of obscenity, were frequently smuggled into his native country, building Miller an underground reputation. In 1940 he returned to the United States settling at Big Sur, California. There he continued to produce his vividly written, semiphilosophical, and often ribald works, which attacked contemporary American cultural values and moral attitudes. His books include The Colossus of Maroussi (1941); The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945-1947); a trilogy, The Rosy Crucifixion, comprising Sexus (1949), Plexus (1953), and Nexus (1960); Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (1957); and the critical work The World of Lawrence (1980). The publication of Miller's two "Tropics" novels in the United States led to a series of obscenity trials that tested American laws on pornography and ended, in 1964, in a victory for him when the Supreme Court overruled state court findings of obscenity. Miller also earned recognition as a watercolorist.