That’s where the legendary laissez-faire attitude of the French saved the day. But even with her guidance and injection of cash, there was the matter of finding a publishing house that would take it on. Firstly, it was the editorial support of Nin – not to mention her financial backing – that got the manuscript to a publishable standard. It was an interesting conflation of circumstances that led Tropic Of Cancer to even see the light of day. Unsurprisingly, they divorced in 1934, the same year that Tropic Of Cancer was published. Then, a plot twist: Miller’s wife began an affair with Nin as well. Paris was the place for it, after all the city was chockers full of debauched artistic types (Hemingway, Joyce, and Beckett all hung out there during the same period), so he had plenty of company.Īs he was writing Tropic Of Cancer, his first book, he began a torrid affair with Anaïs Nin (and it was her diaries, published later, that made celebrities of them both). There, she encouraged him to begin writing, and he threw himself whole-heartedly into a life of bohemian squalor. He supported himself through a string of odd-jobs until his second wife took him to Paris. By way of example, at one point he had an affair with his first wife’s mother. As an adult, he had – shall we say – a complicated romantic life. Miller grew up in the States, born in 1891 to German-speaking parents and only learning to speak English fluently during his school years.

See, Tropic of Cancer, much like The Sun Also Rises, and On The Road, is what we call a roman-à-clef (which is a fancy way of saying that Miller wrote a diary and just changed a few names before he published it). To understand Tropic Of Cancer, you really need to understand the life and times of Henry Miller. (If you want to support this site, make a purchase through an affiliate link on this page – at no cost to you!)

Tropic of cancer by henry miller