Poet. She was the descendant, on her father’s side, of two men who had served as delegates at the Continental Congress in 1774: William Duer and Senator Rufus King. She was educated at Barnard College, where she studied mathematics and astronomy. With her sister Caroline King Duer, she published a book of poems to help finance her education. Graduating in June 1899, she married Henry Wise Miller the following October. A suffragist, Miller published numerous satirical poems in the New York Tribune under the heading “Unauthorized Interviews,” lampooning legislators who opposed woman’s suffrage. In the 1920s and 1930s, a number of Miller’s stories were made into motion pictures, and she also became a screenwriter. She is perhaps most well known for her “verse novel” entitled “The White Cliffs,” which tells the story of an American girl who, as a tourist in London, meets an upper-class Englishman, whose fortunes, along with those of their son, are shaken by World Wars I and II. Extremely popular, the poem was turned into the movie The White Cliffs of Dover, starring Irene Dunne, in 1944. The poem was also the inspiration for the World War II-era song, “The White Cliffs of Dover,” sung by Vera Lynn.

Poet. She was the descendant, on her father’s side, of two men who had served as delegates at the Continental Congress in 1774: William Duer and Senator Rufus King. She was educated at Barnard College, where she studied mathematics and astronomy. With her sister Caroline King Duer, she published a book of poems to help finance her education. Graduating in June 1899, she married Henry Wise Miller the following October. A suffragist, Miller published numerous satirical poems in the New York Tribune under the heading “Unauthorized Interviews,” lampooning legislators who opposed woman’s suffrage. In the 1920s and 1930s, a number of Miller’s stories were made into motion pictures, and she also became a screenwriter. She is perhaps most well known for her “verse novel” entitled “The White Cliffs,” which tells the story of an American girl who, as a tourist in London, meets an upper-class Englishman, whose fortunes, along with those of their son, are shaken by World Wars I and II. Extremely popular, the poem was turned into the movie The White Cliffs of Dover, starring Irene Dunne, in 1944. The poem was also the inspiration for the World War II-era song, “The White Cliffs of Dover,” sung by Vera Lynn.

Bio by: Eileen Cunningham