Henry Joseph Darger Jr. (1892 – 1973) was an American writer, novelist and artist who worked as a hospital custodian in Chicago, Illinois. He was born in Chicago and given up for adoption at age four, after his mother died. When his father was hospitalised in 1900, the boy was taken to an orphanage and then to a mental asylum because of his 'bad' behaviour. Darger became famous for his posthumously discovered manuscript called The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, along with several hundred drawings and watercolor paintings illustrating the story.