Henry Miller

A Life

Robert Ferguson

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9780571294848
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

Bohemian, egoist and prophet of sensualism, Henry Miller remains to many writers and readers a literary lion. Born in Brooklyn in 1891, son of a tailor of German extraction, Miller would embrace a freewheeling existence that carried him through umpteen jobs and sexual encounters, providing rich source material for the novels he would write. Greenwich Village and Paris in the 1920s offered rich pickings, as did Miller's ten-year affair with Anais Nin. But he was 69 before Tropic of Cancer was legally published in the US and made him famous, almost 30 years from its composition and long after his peers had devoured it in contraband French editions.
Robert Ferguson reveals Miller as a amalgam of vulnerability and insouciance, who endured thirty years of official opprobrium but won the respect of Orwell, T.S. Eliot and Lawrence Durrell, and readers by the thousand.
'This impressive biography [is] good, dirty fun.' Observer
'Engaging and perceptive.' Economist
'Lively and entertaining.' J.G. Ballard

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Illustration Acknowledgements
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• CHAPTER ONE : 1891–1909 Childhood and first love
• CHAPTER TWO : 1909–1916 The widow and the tailor shop
• CHAPTER THREE : 1916–1920 Beatrice
• CHAPTER FOUR : 1920–1923 A proper job and the first book
• CHAPTER FIVE : 1923–1924 ‘America on foot, winged and sexed’
• CHAPTER SIX : 1924–1926 The apprentice bohemian
• CHAPTER SEVEN : 1926–1927 The first triangle: Henry, June and Mara/Jean
• CHAPTER EIGHT : 1927–1930 Intimations of Europe
• CHAPTER NINE : 1930–1931 Paris on foot
• CHAPTER TEN : 1931–1933 The second triangle: Henry, June and Anais
• CHAPTER ELEVEN : 1933–1934 Tropic of Cancer and ‘a half-dozen terrifying words’
• CHAPTER TWELVE : 1935–1939 ‘Rome has to burn in order for a guy like me to sing’
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN : 1939–1944 Ancient Greeks and air-conditioned Americans
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN : 1944–1951 Life on the lost horizon
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN : 1951–1959 The Rosy Crucifixion: in search of lost youth
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN : 1959–1970 Everybody’s hero, everybody’s villain
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN : 1970–1980 ‘I regard myself as a history of our time’
• Bibliography
• Index
• Plates
• About the Author
• Copyright