Anais Nin Biography and List of Works

French-born novelist, passionate eroticist and short story writer, who gained international fame with her journals. Spanning the years from 1931 to 1974, they record an account of one woman's voyage of self-discovery. Anaïs Nin was largely ignored until the 1960s. Today she is regarded as one of the leading women writers of the 20th-century. She has become a source of inspiration for those who are ready to take risks in their life for the sake of art and adventure.

"It's all right for a woman to be, above all, human. I am a woman first of all."
(from The Diary of Anaïs Nin, vol. I, 1966)

Anaïs Nin was born in Neuilly, France, to artistic parents. After a cosmopolitan childhood in Europe, Nin came to New York City with her Danish mother and two brothers in 1914. Her father, the Cuban-born composer-pianist Joaquin Nin, had deserted the family when Nin was 11. He had seduced Nin in her childhood according to some sources - however, Nin's work combined truth and fiction, and some of the details surrounding her life are part of her myth. Largely self-educated, she spent her youth reading in public libraries and keeping a journal. She initially wrote in French and did not begin to write in English until she was seventeen.

In New York Nin studied art, and in 1923 married Hugh Guiler. He later illustrated her books under the pseudonym Ian Hugo, and became known as an engraver and filmmaker. In the 1930's they moved to Paris, France, where she started writing fiction. In France Nin became associated with the villa Seurat group, which included Henry Miller. He and Nin both influenced each other in their work - their correspondence was published in 1987 as A LITERARY PASSION. With Otto Rans she worked as a lay analyst and was his lover. Her career as a writer started with the publication of D.H. LAWRENCE: AN UNPROFESSIONAL STUDY. It was followed by several books, including her masterwork HOUSE OF INCEST (1936), a prose poem dealing with psychological torments, WINTER OF ARTIFICE (1939), about a daughter's relationship to her father, and a collection of short stories, UNDER A GLASS BELL (1944).

The series CITIES OF THE INTERIOR included CHIDREN OF THE ALBATROSS (1947), LADDERS TO FIRE (1946), CHILDREN OF THE ALBATROSS (1947), THE FOUR-CHAMBERED HEART (1950), and A SPY IN THE HOUSE OF LOVE (1954). The series focused on different female types and followed their lives through lovers, art, and analysis. All of Nin's writings have an erotic quality. In the early 1940s she wrote a series of specifically sexual pieces, which were edited and published posthumously as DELTA OF VENUS (1977) and LITTLE BIRDS (1979). Nin wrote the stories in Delta of Venus for a dollar a page in the 1940s.

With the understanding Hugh Guiler Nin enjoyed a secure marriage for over 50 years. He stayed out of the way of her extramarital life during a series of affairs with Henry Miller, Otto Rank, Gore Vidal, and Edmund Wilson. Indeed Nin married her second husband Rupert Cole in California and the bicoastal bigamous marriage had her commuting between New York and California for at least 25 years.

"I only believe in fire. Life. Fire. Being myself on fire I set others on fire. Never death. Fire and life. Les Jeux."

In the early 1940s she returned to New York, where she set up the Gemor Press and published her works at her own expense. In the 1940s and 1950s she became allied with such young writers as Robert Duncan, Gore Vidal, and James Leo Herlihy. In the 1960s Nin gained fame with her diaries, which arose interest in her earlier works. Nin's diary covers the years from 1931 to 1977 and provides an insight into her development as a woman and artist. The first volume appeared when she was 63. More than a biographical document, the diary is a work of art. Each volume has a unifying theme. Individuals and scenes are vivid, conversations are presented in dialogue, and lengthy observations are juxtaposed with cryptic comments.

Although Nin was criticized as a narcissist, the feminist perspective of her works, psychological insight, and her search for self-knowledge made her a popular lecturer in universities across the U.S. In 1975 A WOMAN SPEAKS: THE LECTURES, SEMINARS, AND INTERVIEWS OF ANAÏS NIN, was published in which Nin dissociated herself from the political activism of feminist, and advocated journal keeping as a preliminary requirement for a liberated self. The last volumes of her diaries appeared posthumously in the 1980s. Nin died on January 14, 1977, in Los Angeles.

"It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it."

For further reading: Aesthetic Autobiography by Suzanne Nalbantian (1997); Anaïs Nin: Literary Perspectives, ed. by Suzanne Nalbantian (1997); Anaïs Nin and the Remaking of Self by Diane Richard-Allerdyce (1997); Anaïs Nin: A Biography by D. Bair (1995); Conversations With Anais Nin, ed. by Wendy M. Dubow (1994); The Erotic Life of Anis Nin by Riley Fitch (1993); Anaïs Nin: An Introduction by B. Franklin and D. Schneider (1979); Anaïs Nin: A Reference Guide by R. Cutting (1978); Anaïs Nin by B. Knapp (1978); Collage of Dreams by S.Spencer (1977); The Mirror and the Garden by E. Hinz (1973); Anaïs Nin by O. Evans (1968) - Note: Film Henry and June, dir. by Philip Kaufman, starring Frew Ward and Uma Thurman, depicted the relatioship between Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller. In 1973 Nin was the subject of a documentary film, Anaïs Observed.- Note: American critic Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) was an early champion of Nin's works.

D.H. LAWRENCE. AN UNPROFESSIONAL STUDY, (1932)