Anais Nin (1903

Angela Anais Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell

February 21, 1903 - January 14, 1977

Erotic Author

Bigamist

Philanderer

I was born in France. My father was the composer Joaquin Nin, who grew up in Spain but was born in and returned to Cuba. My mother, Rosa Culmell y Vigaraud, was of Cuban, French, and Danish ancestry. I moved to the United States in 1914 after my father deserted the family. In the United States I attended Catholic schools, dropped out of school, worked as a model and dancer, and returned to Europe in 1923.

I studied psychoanalysis and briefly practiced as a lay therapist in New York. I was a patient of Carl Jung for a time as well.

Finding it difficult to get my erotic stories published, I helped found Siana Editions in France in 1935. By 1939 and the outbreak of World War II I returned to New York, where I became a figure in the Greenwich Village crowd.

An obscure literary figure for most of my life, when my journals -- kept since 1931 -- began to be published in 1966, I entered the public eye. The ten volumes of The Diary of Anaïs Nin have remained popular. These are more than simple diaries; each volume has a theme, and were written with the intent that they later be published. Letters I exchanged with intimate friends, including Henry Miller, have also been published. The popularity of the diaries brought interest in my previously-published novels. The Delta of Venus and Little Birds, originally written in the 1940s, were published after my death.

I am also known for my lovers, who included Henry Miller, Edmund Wilson, Gore Vidal and Otto Rank. I was married to Hugh Guiler of New York who tolerated my affairs. I also entered into a second, bigamous marriage to Rupert Pole in California. I had the marriage annulled about the time I was achieving more widespread fame. I was living with Pole at the time of my death, and he saw to the publication of a new edition of my diaries, unexpurgated.

(Article based upon: http://womenshistory.about.com/od/anaisnin/a/anais_nin.htm)