Author. Born in Lincolnshire; reared in poverty; received little schooling. Apprenticed to a basket-maker. Brought out volume of poems, 1832. About 1835 went to London; brought himself to notice of Lady Blessington, who became for a time his patroness. Thomas Moore, Samuel Rogers, WiIliam Jerdan, and others also interested themselves in the "basket-maker poet". Set up as bookseller and publisher; unsuccessful. Some of his poems published in Friendship's Offering; contributed verse and prose to periodicals—Literary Gazette, lllustrated London News, Athenaeum, Chambers's. Author of some forty-five works—volumes of poems, novels, children's books, and "country books", e.g., A Day in the Woods, 1836; Rural Sketches, 1839. His miscellaneous writing included History of the Anglo-Saxons, 1848; Picturesque Sketches of London, 1852.

Miller was at times in great poverty. In 1851 he addressed to Dickens a plea for assistance. Dickens, writing to Bulwer-Lytton (August 14 1851), enclosed Miller's letter and said of Miller and his plight: "I am afraid it is a case in which no permanent good can be done—I have several times sat upon it when at the Literary Fund, and I fear he has mistaken his vocation, and is a little impracticable besides—but he seems in great affliction now". According to Vizetelly (Glances Back through Seventy Years, I, 309), the Literary Fund made Miller "frequent timely gifts".

Men of the Time, 1868, mentions Miller as a H.W. contributor.

Author: Anne Lohrli; © University of Toronto Press, 1971.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography