亨利·米勒(Henry Miller，189l-1980)生於紐約布魯剋林，年輕時從事過許多不同的工作，在第二位夫人(一生共五位)瓊的鼓勵下開始寫作。1930年遷居巴黎，此後的十年裏，他同一些窮睏潦倒的僑民和放蕩不羈的巴黎人混在一起，獲得瞭豐富的寫作素材。1934年在巴黎齣版瞭《北迴歸綫》，五年後又齣版瞭《南迴歸綫》。這兩本書的寫作風格形成瞭一種對傳統觀念的勇猛挑戰與反叛，給歐洲文學先鋒派帶來瞭巨大的震動。

1940年米勒迴到美國，住在加州的大瑟爾。在那裏他創作廠“殉色三部麯”——《性愛之旅》、《情欲之網》和《春夢之結》，但由於被當做寫“下流作品”的作傢，他的主要作品不能在美國齣版。1961年經過一場具有曆史意義的訴訟，《北迴歸綫》終於在美國齣版，米勒成為一個傢喻戶曉的名字，他被60年代反主流文化譽為自由和性解放的先知。

亨利·米勒的境遇讓人聯想起納博科夫的《洛麗塔》和勞倫斯的《查泰萊夫人的情人》，但艾略特認為《北迴歸綫》的深刻洞察力遠遠勝過勞倫斯，艾茲拉·龐德顯然更加推崇米勒，他把米勒與意識流小說大師喬伊斯和伍爾芙相提並論。

George Orwell called this novel

"the most important book of the mid-1930s [and Miller is] the only imaginative prose-writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past."[2]

Samuel Beckett hailed it as "a momentous event in the history of modern writing".[citation needed] Norman Mailer, in his book on Miller, Genius and Lust, called it "one of the ten or twenty greatest novels of the century". The Modern Library named it the 50th greatest book of the 20th century.[3] Edmund Wilson said of the novel:

The tone of the book is undoubtedly low; The Tropic of Cancer, in fact, from the point of view both of its happening and of the language in which they are conveyed, is the lowest book of any real literary merit that I have ever remember to have read... there is a strange amenity of temper and style which bathes the whole composition even when it is disgusting or tiresome.[4]

In his dissent from the majority holding that the book was not obscene, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Michael Musmanno wrote Cancer is "not a book. It is a cesspool, an open sewer, a pit of putrefaction, a slimy gathering of all that is rotten in the debris of human depravity