A short life of the author
Madeline Miller (b. 1978) was born on 24 July 1978 in Boston, Massachusetts. She studied classics at Brown University and has an MA in classics from the University of Chicago. She taught Latin, Greek, and Shakespeare at the high school level for over fifteen years and has directed and adapted Greek plays.
Life and Career
The Song of Achilles (2012) — which retells the story of the Trojan War through the eyes of Patroclus, the companion and lover of Achilles — took ten years to write. Miller’s deep knowledge of the Homeric texts allowed her to reimagine the Iliad as a love story without reducing it. The novel won the Orange Prize for Fiction (now the Women’s Prize) and became a major BookTok phenomenon years after publication.
Circe (2018) — which gives voice to the witch-goddess of Aeaea, transforming a figure who appears in a single book of the Odyssey into a fully realised woman negotiating power, exile, and autonomy in a world of gods — was a #1 New York Times bestseller and one of the most universally praised novels of its year. Miller spent another decade on it, reading every ancient source that mentions Circe.
Major Works and Themes
Miller writes about the ancient world with an emotional directness and psychological acuity that makes it feel immediate. Her two novels are acts of translation in the deepest sense — they take stories that have been retold for three thousand years and find what is urgent and alive in them for contemporary readers.
Key Works
- The Song of Achilles (2012)
- Circe (2018)
Collecting Miller
The Song of Achilles (2012, Ecco) brings $40–$120 for firsts. Circe (2018, Little, Brown) brings $20–$60.