Anais Nin
Anaïs Nin was a
French-Cuban author born in 1903 in France. As an author, she was best
known for her journals, as well as her erotic fiction.
From childhood, Nin was surrounded by art and artists. She moved several
times, living in Spain, New York and Paris, where she began writing
professionally in 1923. She once again left France in 1939, this time to
escape World War II, and moved to New York. In the 1940s, she split her
time between New York and Los Angeles.
Much of her personal life is detailed in her journals, which are full of
her interactions with some of the era’s best known authors, artists, and
psychiatrists, including Henry Miller and Otto Rank. The journals also
tell about Nin’s two simultaneous marriages, which she referred to as a
‘bicoastal trapeze’.
Nin’s journals were published during her life, though the original
versions, published in 1966, were significantly edited at the request of
her first husband. They were published in seven volumes under the title
The Diary of Anaïs Nin. An unexpurgated version would be published
posthumously in 1986 as Henry and June: From the Unexpurgated Diary of
Anaïs Nin.
Nin’s writing was not limited to her journals. Her first book was D. H.
Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study, published in 1932. Her fiction
writing included 1936’s House of Incest and 1939’s Winter of Artifice.
When Nin died in 1977, much of her work was left unpublished. Posthumous
publication of her short stories, journals, and erotic fiction has
earned her a lasting legacy.
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