The Man Who Inspired a Library 

Henry Miller was a writer famous for forging his own literary path, creating a style that combines novel, autobiography, and social criticism, though he is also known for writing travel memoirs and literary criticism and analysis. His works include Tropic of Cancer (1934), Tropic of Capricorn (1939), Black Spring (1936), The Colossus of Maroussi (1941), The Plight of the Creative Artist in the United States of America (1944), and The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945). 

Though he was born in New York, he lived briefly in Paris and Chicago and moved to Big Sur in 1940. His best-known work, The Tropic of Cancer, was banned in the United States on the grounds that it was obscene, but fans managed to smuggle it into the country. When it was eventually published in the U.S., in 1961, it sparked obscenity trials that eventually went to the Supreme Court, which declared it a work of literature.

The writer was featured as a character in several movies, portrayed by Fred Ward in a 1990 film Henry & June, and in the 1970 film Quiet Days in Clichy. He had five wives over the course of his life, including Beatrice Sylvas Wickens (1917-1928), June Miller (1928-1934), Janina Martha Lepska (1944-1952), Eve McClure (1953-1960), and Hiroko Tokuda (1967-1977).