Anais Nin

"To live life as a dream" was Nin's motto, and she did so. She was a bigamist for more than thirty years, creating a "Lie Box" to help her keep her stories straight. And always she kept her diary, which eventually became one of the most astonishing renderings of a contemporary woman's life, noted as much for what she left out as for what she included. Bair's biography fills in the blanks and shows how Nin reflected the major themes that have come to characterize the latter half of the twentieth century: the quest for the self, the uses of psychoanalysis, and the determination of women to control their own sexuality.

The renowned diarist continues the story begun in Henry and June and Incest. Drawing from the author’s original, uncensored journals, Fire follows Anaïs Nin’s journey as she attempts to liberate herself sexually, artistically, and emotionally. While referring to her relationships with psychoanalyst Otto Rank and author Henry Miller, as well as a new lover, the Peruvian Gonzalo Moré, she also reveals that her most passionate and enduring affair is with writing itself.

The fourth volume of “one of the most remarkable diaries in the history of letters” (Los Angeles Times). The renowned diarist continues her record of her personal, professional, and artistic life, recounting her experiences in Greenwich Village for several years in the late 1940s, where she defends young writers against the Establishment—and her trip across the country in an old Ford to California and Mexico. “[Nin is] one of the most extraordinary and unconventional writers of [the twentieth] century.” —The New York Times Book Review Edited and with a preface by Gunther Stuhlmann

The Portable Anais Nin is the first comprehensive collection of the author's work in nearly 40 years, during which time her catalogue has doubled with the release of the erotica and unexpurgated diaries. A handy source book of Nin's most important writings, arranged chronologically and annotated by prominent Nin scholar Benjamin Franklin V. Included are complete diary excerpts, entire fictional works, such as The House of Incest, erotica, interviews, selections from her unpublished diary, and her critical writings.

From influential feminist artist and essayist Anais Nin, Delta of Venus is one of the most important works of modern female erotica and "a joyous display of the erotic imagination" (The New York Times Book Review). Anais Nin pens a lush, magical world where the characters of her imagination possess the most universal of desires and exceptional of talents. Among these provocative stories, a Hungarian adventurer seduces wealthy women then vanishes with their money; a veiled woman selects strangers from a chic restaurant for private trysts; and a Parisian hatmaker named Mathilde leaves her husband for the opium dens of Peru. This is an extraordinarily rich and exotic collection from a master of erotic writing. "Inventive, sophisticated . . . highly elegant naughtiness."—Cosmopolitan

The trailblazing memoirist and author of Henry & June recounts her relationships with Henry Miller and others—including her own father. Anaïs Nin wrote in her uncensored diaries like they were a broad-minded confidante with whom she shared the liberating psychosexual dramas of her life. In this continuation of her notorious Henry & June, she recounts a particularly turbulent period between 1932 and 1934, and the men who dominated it: her protective husband, her therapist, and the poet Antonin Artaud. However, most consuming of all is novelist Henry Miller—a man whose genius, said Anaïs, was so demonic it could drive people insane. Here too, recounted in extraordinary detail, is the sexual affair she had with her father. At once loving, exciting, and vengeful, it was the ultimate social transgression for which Anaïs would eventually seek absolution from her analysts. “Before Lena Dunham there was Anaïs Nin. Like Dunham, she’s been accused of narcissism, sociopathy, and sexual perversion time and again. Yet even that comparison undercuts the strangeness and bravery of her work, for Nin was the first of her kind. And, like all truly unique talents, she was worshipped by some, hated by many, and misunderstood by most . . . A woman who’d spent decades on the bleeding edge of American intellectual life, a woman who had been a respected colleague of male writers who pushed the boundaries of acceptable sex writing. Like many great . . . experimentalists, she wrote for a world that did not yet exist, and so helped to bring it into being.” —The Guardian Includes an introduction by Rupert Pole

A “lyrical, impassioned” document of the intimate relationship between the two authors that was first disclosed in Henry and June (Booklist). This exchange of letters between the two controversial writers—Anaïs Nin, renowned for her candid and personal diaries, and Henry Miller, author of Tropic of Cancer—paints a portrait of more than two decades in their complex relationship as it moves through periods of passion, friendship, estrangement, and reconciliation. “The letters may disturb some with their intimacy, but they will impress others with their fragrant expression of devotion to art.” —Booklist “A portrait of Miller and Nin more rounded than any previously provided by critics, friends, and biographers.” —Chicago Tribune Edited and with an introduction by Gunther Stuhlmann

This book of essays is the first to probe Anais Nin's achievements as a literary artist. With an introduction by the editor, Suzanne Nalbantian, the collection examines the literary strategies of Nin in their psychoanalytical and stylistic dimensions. Various contributors scrutinize Nin's artistry, identifying her unique modernist techniques and her poetic vision. Others observe the transfer of her psychoanalytical positions to narrative. The volume also contains fresh views of Nin by her brother Joaquin Nin-Culmell as well as innovative analyses of the reception of her works.

She remains torn between three men: Henry Miller, whose detached self-immersion and artistic "impersonality" both attract and repel her; Gonzalo More, a sensitive and attentive but jealous lover who drives her to distraction; and Hugh Guiler, her faithful husband, who provides a calm center for Nin. In addition, a wide circle of family, friends, and admirers makes demands on Nin's time and emotional energy.

Collages explores a world of fantasy and dreams through an eccentric young painter. Nin's first book was published in the 1930s and she went on to write stories and a series of autobiographical novels and her celebrated volumes of erotica.