Miller, Henry

Miller, Henry	Gender: M
Birthname	Henry Valentine Miller
born on	26 December 1891 at 12:30 (= 12:30 PM )
Place	Manhattan, New York, 40n46, 73w59
Timezone	EST h5w (is standard time)
	Rodden Rating A
	Collector: Rodden
Astrology data	04°42' 12°47 Asc. 22°57'

Henry Miller
natal chart (Placidus)
natal chart English style (Equal houses)
natal chart with Whole Sign houses

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Henry Miller (1940)

Biography

American writer whose books were banned as obscene in the U.S. for many years. His works were drawn, for the most part, from personal experience and observation with stories of the women he loved and the friends he cherished. A late bloomer, Miller, who was raised in Brooklyn, was first published at age 42 while living in Paris. His "Tropic of Cancer" was followed by "Tropic of Capricorn," 1939, and the trilogy "Rosy Crucifixion" in 1949, 1953 and 1959. Miller's most important books had been published originally in France, and were banned in the United States until 1961. Highly eccentric, Miller also had a second career as a watercolor painter, and for years, made more money from that than he did from his writing.

Miller was born to lower-middle class parents in the Yorkville section of New York City. In 1892, the Millers moved across the East River to Williamsburg and Henry was raised in that part of Brooklyn. In 1909, he entered the City College of New York, and left after two months. He took a job with the Atlas Portland Cement company in Manhattan. Two years later, his father, a merchant tailor, financed him to go to Cornell University. Miller took the money and disappeared with his mistress, a lover who was old enough to be his mother. He returned home a year later, then left for good to go West. He worked in the Southwest, mostly as a ranch hand, and became interested in movements such as the Industrial Workers of the World.

In 1914, Miller assisted his ailing father in his tailor shop, and began writing in his spare time. After clerking in government agencies in Washington, DC, he became an employment manager with Western Union Telegraph Company in New York City in 1920. During a three-week vacation from that time, in 1923, he wrote his first book, which was never published.

He was married for seven years to Beatrice Sylvas Wickens, a Brooklyn piano teacher, with whom he had a daughter, Barbara. In 1924, he divorced her and married June Smith (also called June Mansfield in some bios), a dancer with literary aspirations whom he had met a year earlier. This marked the beginning of a tempestuous lifestyle in which he came to the brink of suicide, but also the time in which he was first free to give his full attention to writing. He quit his job, living off the money that June managed to get from other men. June fascinated Miller with her numerous intrigues with others, men and women alike, and some Miller biographers say she was his muse. Their relationship was the subject of the 1990 film, "Henry & June."

The first piece of writing he sold was an article bought by Liberty magazine, but never published. He tried fiction next for pulp magazines. His more serious writings at that time were "mezzotints," prose-poems that be printed up and his wife sold to customers in restaurants and speakeasies. The idea of fictional autobiography first came to him in 1927, when he diagrammed, in one day, the outline for The Tropics books.

Miller toured Europe with his wife for several months in 1928 and 1929, then returned in 1930 alone to settle in Paris. He and June divorced four years later. In Paris, Miller had brief stints as a proofreader for the Paris edition of the "Chicago Tribune" and as a teacher of conventional English. He was also European editor of the "Phoenix," an editor of the "Booster," and a contributing editor of the French review, "Volontes." His first published story was "Mademoiselle Claude," a tribute to Parisian prostitutes that appeared in the "New Revier" in 1931. "Tropic of Cancer," written in 1931 and 1932, was his first published book and related the adventures of himself and low-life friends. During the decades following its publication, "Tropic of Cancer" was frequently smuggled into the United States by American tourists. The first Miller book that any American publisher dared to issue was "The Cosmological Eye," in 1939. "The World of Sex" was issued in the U.S. in 1940, but in a private printing.

In 1939, Miller visited Greece, described in "The Colossus of Maroussi," 1941, a travel memoir that remained Miller's personal favorite of all his work. After World War II, Miller returned to the USA, arriving in New York in March 1940. After a few months, he began a year-long tour of the country with his painter friend, Abraham Rattner. He recorded this tour in "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare," 1945, and partly in "Remember to Remember," in 1947.

Cut off from European royalties during the war, Miller depended on friends and admirers for shelter. In 1942, he settled in California for two years where he became the patriarch of a literary and artistic colony near Big Sur. He described his life there in "Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch," 1956. It was also there that he wrote the three novels of "The Rosy Crucifixion" as well as "Maurizius Forever," 1946, "The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder," 1948, and "Stand Still Like a Mockingbird," 1962.

Shortly after he settled at Big Sur in December 1944, Miller married his third wife, Janina Martha Lepska, by whom he had two children, a daughter, Valentin, and a son, Tony. Janina left him in 1951. In 1953, he married Eve McClure, who divorced him in 1962. In 1964, Miller moved to Pacific Palisades, near Los Angeles, to be near his children and escape the tourists of Big Sur.

In September 1967, Miller married Hoki Tokuda, a Japanese-born cabaret singer and pianist who was then 32 years old. They later divorced.

Eccentric, Miller had an irrational hatred of banks, and couldn't manage the simplest machines, including dial telephones. He has been described as a lifelong anti-Semitic. Affecting him significantly were psychoanalysts Otto Rank and E. Graham Howe. He also had a long relationship with diarist Anais Nin.

Miller's recreations included bicycling, painting abstract expressionist pictures, and astrology. He had a love-hate relationship with Conrad Moricand, an astrologer. Miller's "The Red Notebook," 1958, contains information about his horoscope, and during his long life, he consulted astrologers, graphologists, phrenologists and numerologists.

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

Link to Wikipedia biography

Relationships

associate relationship with Girodias, Maurice (born 12 April 1919)

friend relationship with Brassaï (born 9 September 1899)

friend relationship with Crews, Judson (born 30 June 1917)

friend relationship with Delteil, Joseph (born 20 April 1894)

friend relationship with Durrell, Lawrence (born 27 February 1912)

friend relationship with Temple, Frédéric (born 18 August 1921)

other associate with Stettner, Irving (born 7 November 1922)

spousal equivalent relationship with Nin, Anaïs (born 21 February 1903)

compare to chart of Feltrinelli, Giangiacomo (born 19 June 1926). Notes: Feltrinelli published Miller's "Tropic of Cancer"

role played of/by McCarthy, Andrew (born 29 November 1962). Notes: 1990 film "Quiet Days in Clichy"

role played of/by Torn, Rip (born 6 February 1931). Notes: 1970 film "Tropic of Cancer"

role played of/by Ward, Fred (born 30 December 1942). Notes: 1990 film "Henry & June"

Events

Social : Begin a program of study 1909 (City College of N.Y., two months)

Work : New Job 1914 (Assisted his dad in tailor shop)

Work : New Job 1920 (Mngmt. Western Union Co.)

Work : New Career 1923 (Wrote first book, never published)

Relationship : Marriage 1924 (Second marriage June Smith)

Social : Change of Lifestyle 1928 (Traveled Europe)

Family : Change residence 1930 (Settled in Paris)

Work : Published/ Exhibited/ Released 1932 (Book "Tropic of Cancer")

Relationship : Divorce dates 1934 (From June)

Financial : Best Period 1939 (First books published)

Family : Change residence March 1940 (Moved to N.Y.)
chart Placidus Equal_H.

Work : Published/ Exhibited/ Released 1941 (Book "The Colossus of Maroussi")

Family : Change residence 1942 (Settled in CA)

Relationship : Marriage 1944 (Third marriage Janina Martha Lepska, 7 yrs.)

Relationship : Marriage 1953 (Fourth marriage Eve McClure, 9 yrs.)

Work : Gain social status 1961 (Books released in U.S.)

Family : Change residence 1964 (Pacific Palisades)

Relationship : Marriage October 1967 (Fifth marriage Hoki Tokuda)
chart Placidus Equal_H.

Death by Disease 7 June 1980 at 4:00 PM in Pacific Palisades (Circulatory complications, age 88)
chart Placidus Equal_H.

Source Notes

B.C. in hand with no time, Felipe Ferreira, 8/1995. The time of "midi-30" is given by him in "My Friend Henry Miller." The biography, "Always Merry and Bright," gives 12:17 PM. "Ma Vie et Noi", Paris: Stock, 1972, p.167 (Original American edition: "My Life and Times," New York, Playboy Press, 1971, quotes a letter from his father, "You were born on a Saturday - Mid Day - between 12:30 and 12:45, can't remember exact time."

Miller, Henry

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