A prequel of sorts to Miller's first published novel, 1934's Tropic of Cancer, it was banned in the United States until a 1961 Justice Department ruling declared that its contents were not obscene.

[3] Miller would also repurpose numerous scenes into Tropic of Capricorn from his unpublished third novel Lucky Lesbians (later retitled Crazy Cock), which he worked on from 1928 to 1930 and which was ultimately published in 1991 (over a decade after his death).

[10] In 1944, accompanied by his soon-to-be third wife Janina Martha Lepska, Miller read excerpts from Tropic of Capricorn and Black Spring at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

He was seen by many as a champion of the new sexual freedom, and was endorsed by well-known literary figures of the time, including Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac.

It is autobiographical but not chronological, jumping between Miller's adolescent adventures in Brooklyn in the 1900s, recollections of his first love Una Gifford, a love affair with his nearly 30-year-old piano teacher when he was 15, his unhappy marriage to his first wife Beatrice, his years working at Western Union (called The Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company in the book) in Manhattan in the 1920s, and his fateful meeting with his second wife June (known in the book as Mara), whom he credits with changing his life and making him into a writer.

It describes the process of Miller finding his voice as a writer, until eventually he sets off for Paris, where the activities depicted in Tropic of Cancer begin.