On Turning Eighty

Henry Miller, American novelist, was born in 1891 in New York City. His most famous works, Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, were written while Miller was an expatriate living in Paris and were originally published in France in the mid-1930s. At that time, the two books were widely considered obscene in the United States, and they were banned from sale there until 1961. Some of Miller's other works include The Colossus of Maroussi and Big Sur and the Oranges of Heironymus Bosch. Henry Miller was married five times and he also had an extended love affair with Anais Nin. He died in 1980 in his Pacific Palisades, Calif., home.