Henry Valentine Miller was born in New York City in 1891 to German immigrant parents. When he was a child, the family moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn, where they lived when Miller graduated from high school. As a young man, he was active in the Socialist Party of America, and although he was passionate about learning, he only attended college for one semester. He was married to his first wife, Beatrice, from 1917 until 1923, and their daughter Barbara was born in 1919. He began working for Western Union in 1920 and would later document his experiences as an employee there in the novel Tropic of Capricorn. He began writing literary fiction in 1922, although the novel he started, Clipped Wings, was never published in full. In 1923, Miller met June Mansfield, who in 1924 became his second wife. He continued writing fiction, much of it—including the novel Crazy Cock—inspired by his relationship with June and her relationships with other women.

Miller visited Paris for the first time in 1928 and moved there alone in 1930, and soon after arriving, he began writing Tropic of Cancer—which he called “the Paris book” in letters to his friends. While in Paris, he met writer Anaïs Nin, with whom he would have a tumultuous relationship for the next fifteen years.