Henry Miller
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was born in 1891 in Brooklyn, New York. He had a variety of jobs as
a young man, including several years working for the Western Union
Telegraph Company. During this time, encouraged by June Mansfield
Smith, the second of his five wives. Miller began to write. Aside
from articles, stories for pulp magazines and prose poems, Miller
worked on his first novels. Crazy Cockand
Moloch,and on the copious notes which
would eventually transmute into the notorious 'Tropics' books.
In 1930, Miller went to live in Paris. For the next ten years he
mingled with impoverished expatriates and bohemian Parisians,
including Brassai, Artaud and Anais Nin, with whom he had a much
documented affair. His first published book. Tropic of Cancer,appeared in 1934 from the Obelisk
Press in Paris. It was followed five years later by its sister
volume. Tropic of Capricorn.Sexually
explicit, these books electrified the European literary
avant-garde, received praise from Eliot, Pound, Beckett and
Durrell, but were almost universally banned outside France.
Miller returned to America in 1940, settling in Big Sur,
California. Here, he wrote the 'Rosy Crucifixion' trilogy -
Sexus(1949), Plexus(1953) and Nexus(1959) but, regarded by many as a writer of
'dirty books', he was unable to get his major works published in
America. In 1961, after an epic legal battle. Tropic of Cancerwas finally published in the States
(in England in 1963). Miller became a household name, hailed by the
Sixties counterculture as a prophet of freedom and sexual
revolution. With the subsequent unbanning of the rest of his books,
Miller's work was finally available in his own country.
He died on June 7 1980.
BY ÒÍE SAME AUTHOR
Tropic of Cancer
Tropic of Capricorn
Black Spring
Aller Retour New York
The Cosmological Eye
The Colossus of Maroussi
The Air-Conditioned Nightmare
Quiet Days in Clichy
Sexus
Plexus
Nexus
Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch
The Books in my Life
A Devil in Paradise
The Wisdom of the Heart
My Life and Times
The World of Sex
Crazy Cock
Moloch
MODERN CLASSIC HENRY MILLER Tropic of Capricorn With an introduction by Robert Nye Flamingo An Imprint of HarperCollinsPuhlishers Flamingo An Imprint of HatperCollinsPublishers 77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
A Flamingo Modem Classic 1993 98765
Previously published in paperback by Grafton 1966 Reprinted 14 times
First published in Great Britain by John Calder (Publishers) Limited 1964
Copyright 0 Henry Miller 1957 Introduction copyright O Robert Nye 1993
ISBN 0 00 654584 X Set in Plantin
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Caledonian International Book Manufacturing Ltd, Glasgow This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.