32 Facts About Henry Miller

Henry Miller wrote travel memoirs and literary criticism, and painted watercolors.

Henry Miller was the son of Lutheran German parents, Louise Marie and tailor Heinrich Miller.

Henry Miller attended the City College of New York for one semester.

Henry Miller married his first wife, Beatrice Sylvas Wickens, in 1917; their divorce was granted on December 21,1923.

At the time, Henry Miller was working at Western Union; he worked there from 1920 to 1924, as personnel manager in the messenger department.

In 1923, while he was still married to Beatrice, Henry Miller met and became enamored of a mysterious dance-hall ingenue who was born Juliet Edith Smerth but went by the stage-name June Mansfield.

In 1924 Henry Miller quit Western Union in order to dedicate himself completely to writing.

In 1928, Henry Miller spent several months in Paris with June, a trip which was financed by Freedman.

In 1931, Henry Miller was employed by the Chicago Tribune Paris edition as a proofreader, thanks to his friend Alfred Perles, who worked there.

Henry Miller took this opportunity to submit some of his own articles under Perles' name, since at that time only the editorial staff were permitted to publish in the paper.

Henry Miller's first published book, Tropic of Cancer, was published by Obelisk Press in Paris and banned in the United States on the grounds of obscenity.

Henry Miller became fluent in French during his ten-year stay in Paris and lived in France until June 1939.

Henry Miller described the visit in The Colossus of Maroussi, which he considered his best book.

In 1940, Henry Miller returned to New York; after a year-long trip around the United States, a journey that would become material for The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, he moved to California in June 1942, initially residing just outside Hollywood in Beverly Glen, before settling in Big Sur in 1944.

Henry Miller lived in a small house on Partington Ridge from 1944 to 1947, along with other bohemian writers like Harry Partch, Emil White, and Jean Varda.

Henry Miller writes about his fellow artists who lived at Anderson Creek as the Anderson Creek Gang in Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch.

Henry Miller paid $5 per month rent for his shack on the property.

In other works written during his time in California, Henry Miller was widely critical of consumerism in America, as reflected in Sunday After the War and The Air-Conditioned Nightmare.

Henry Miller's Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, published in 1957, is a collection of stories about his life and friends in Big Sur.

In 1944, Henry Miller met and married his third wife, Janina Martha Lepska, a philosophy student who was 30 years his junior.

In 1961, Henry Miller arranged a reunion in New York with his ex-wife and main subject of The Rosy Crucifixion trilogy, June.

In 1948, Henry Miller wrote a novella which he called his "most singular story," a work of fiction entitled "The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder".

In February 1963, Henry Miller moved to 444 Ocampo Drive, Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California, where he would spend the last 17 years of his life.

In 1967, Henry Miller married his fifth wife, Japanese born singer Hoki Tokuda.

In 1968, Henry Miller signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.

Henry Miller's cook and caretaker was a young artist's model named Twinka Thiebaud who later wrote a book about his evening chats.

Thiebaud's memories of Henry Miller's table talk were published in a rewritten and retitled book in 2011.

Henry Miller spoke of his remembrances of John Reed and Louise Bryant as part of a series of "witnesses".

Henry Miller died of circulatory complications at his home in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, on June 7,1980, at the age of 88.

Henry Miller's body was cremated and his ashes shared between his son Tony and daughter Val.

Henry Miller was a close friend of the French painter Gregoire Michonze.

Henry Miller influenced many writers, including Lojze Kovacic, Richard Brautigan, Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, Vitomil Zupan, Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy, Paul Theroux and Erica Jong.