Celebrity
Brenda
Venus

Henry Miller's most famous book, Tropic of Cancer, chronicles Miller's life, and especially his loves, while an expatriate in Paris. Miller's writing is famous for its fleshy descriptions of sexual love and the uneasy alliance between the sexes. One of the women with whom Miller had a romantic, yet platonic, relationship was Brenda Venus. Her friendship with Miller lasted four years, until his death in 1980. In 1986, some of the hundreds of letters Miller wrote to Venus were published in the book Dear, Dear Brenda. Following the book's release, Venus, then a struggling actress, posed for the July 1986 issue of Playboy. The photos shown here are from that pictorial, which Venus said she did "as if I were a Greek goddess, an imaginary creature. I wanted to play it like an actress. I think Henry would be proud."