American author Henry Miller (1891-1980) was a major literary force in the late 1950s largely because his two most important novels, prohibited from publication and sale in the United States for many years, tested Federal laws concerning art and pornography.

Born December 26, 1891 in Brooklyn, New York City, Henry Miller grew up in Brooklyn and briefly attended the City College of New York. From 1909 to 1924 he worked at various jobs, including employment with a cement company, assisting his father at a tailor shop, and sorting mail for the Post Office. While in the messenger department of Western Union, he started a novel. Throughout this period he had a troubled personal life and had two unsuccessful marriages (throughout his life he married five women and divorced all of them). Determined to become a writer, Miller went to Paris, where, impoverished, he remained for nearly a decade. In 1934 he composed Tropic...