[[Image:Anaisnin.jpg|thumb|200px|right|Anaïs Nin in the mid-1970s.]]

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'''Anaïs Nin''' {{IPA2|ana'iːs nin}} (born Angela Anais Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell) ([[February 21]] [[1903]] - [[January 14]] [[1977]]) was a [[France|French]]-born [[author]] who became famous for her published [[journal]]s, which span more than 60 years, beginning when she was 11 years old and ending shortly before her death. Nin is also famous for her erotica, which not only is sensual, but also acts as a study of sexuality in its perfection and flaws.

Her first husband was [[Hugh Parker Guiler]], a banker and artist, whom she married as a young woman in [[March]] [[1923]]. [[Rupert Pole]], whom she married in 1955 while still married to Guiler, was a [[forester]] and the step-grandson of architect [[Frank Lloyd Wright]]. After the death of Hugh Guiler in 1985, the unexpurgated versions of her journals were commissioned by Pole.<ref>http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-pole26jul26,0,7114784.story?coll=la-home-headlines</ref>

== Biography ==
Anaïs Nin was born in [[Neuilly]], [[France]] to two artistic parents. Her father, Joaquin Nin, was a [[Cuban]]<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A06EFDE1238F931A15756C0A962958260] "Her Cuban father was a celebrated pianist and composer"</ref><ref>[http://www.enotes.com/salem-lit/diary-anais-nin] "Joaquin Nin, a prominent Cuban pianist and composer"</ref> pianist and composer, and her mother Rosa Culmell<ref>[http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/anaisnin.htm]</ref> was also [[Cuban]],<ref><http://www.morbidoutlook.com/nonfiction/articles/2001_03_anaisnin.html"</ref> but of [[French people|French]] and [[Danish people|Danish]] ancestry and was a classically trained singer. Her paternal great-grandfather fled France during the Revolution, going first to [[Haiti]], then [[New Orleans]], and finally to Cuba where he helped build that country's first railroad.<ref>''Diaries, Volume 1, 1931 - 1934''</ref> After her parents separated, her mother moved Anaïs and her two brothers, Thorvald Nin and [[Joaquin Nin-Culmell]] from Barcelona to [[New York City]]. According to her diaries, ''Volume One, 1931 - 1934'', Nin abandoned formal schooling at the age of 16 and began working as a [[model (person)|model]].

On [[3 March]] [[1923]], in [[Havana]], [[Cuba]], she married Guiler aka '''Ian Hugo''' (1898-1985) the name he used when he became a filmmaker of [[experimental film]]s in the late 1940s. The couple moved to [[Paris]] the following year, where Guiler pursued his [[banking]] career and Nin began to pursue her interest in writing. Her first published work was a critical evaluation of [[D. H. Lawrence]] called ''[[D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study]]''. She also explored the field of [[psychotherapy]], studying under the likes of [[Otto Rank]], a disciple of [[Sigmund Freud]]. According to her diaries,''Volume One, 1931 - 1934'', Nin shared a Bohemian lifestyle with [[Henry Miller]] during that time in Paris. There is no mention of her husband in that edited edition. In 1939, Nin and Hugh Parker Guiler moved back to [[New York City]]. Nin appeared in the [[Kenneth Anger]] film ''[[Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome]]'' (1954) as [[Astarte]], the [[Maya Deren]] film ''Ritual in Transfigured Time'' (1946), and in ''Bells of Atlantis'' (1952), a film directed by Guiler under the name "Ian Hugo" with a soundtrack of [[electronic music]] by [[Louis and Bebe Barron]].

She entered into a second marriage to Rupert Pole, which took place in [[Quartzsite, Arizona]] on [[17 March]] [[1955]], before she and Pole returned to live in California.<ref>Bair biography, 1995 and IMDB.</ref> Guiler remained in New York City and was unaware of Nin's second marriage until after her death in 1977. She often cited authors [[Djuna Barnes]] and [[D. H. Lawrence]] as inspirations. She states in Volume One of her diaries that she and Henry Miller drew inspiration from [[Marcel Proust]], [[André Gide]], [[Jean Cocteau]], [[Paul Valéry]], and [[Arthur Rimbaud]].

==Journals==
Anaïs Nin is perhaps best remembered as a [[diarist]]. Her journals, which span several decades, provide a deeply explorative insight into her personal life and relationships. Nin was acquainted, often quite intimately, with a number of prominent authors, artists, and psychoanalysts and other prominent figures. Her journals portray these persons in a profound depth of analysis and frankness of description. Moreover, as a female author describing a primarily masculine constellation of celebrities, Nin's journals have acquired importance as a counterbalancing perspective.

== Erotic writings ==
[[Image:Anais Nin.jpg|thumb|Portrait taken in New York City in the 1970s]]
Nin is hailed by many critics as one of the finest writers of female [[erotica]]. She was one of the first women to really explore the realm of erotic writing, and certainly the first prominent woman in modern Europe to write erotica. Before her, erotica written by women was very infrequent except for a few writers such as [[Kate Chopin]].

According to Volume I of her diaries, 1931 - 1934, published in 1966 (Stuhlmann), Nin first came across erotica when her mother and two brothers returned to Paris in her late teens. They rented the apartment of an American man who was going away for the summer, and Nin came across a number of French paperbacks: "One by one, I read these books, which were completely new to me. I had never read erotic literature in America… They overwhelmed me. I was innocent before I read them, but by the time I had read them all, there was nothing I did not know about sexual exploits… I had my degree in erotic lore."

Faced with a desperate need for money, Nin and Miller began in the [[1940s]] to write erotic and pornographic narratives for an anonymous "collector" for a dollar a page, somewhat as a joke.<ref>http://www.geocities.com/arsenio_grilo/a_nin_1.html</ref> Nin considered the characters in her erotica to be extreme caricatures and never intended the work to be published, but changed her mind in the early 1970s and allowed them to be published as ''[[Delta of Venus]]'' and ''[[Little Birds]]''.

Nin was a friend, and in some cases lover, of many leading literary figures, including [[Henry Miller]], [[Antonin Artaud]], [[Edmund Wilson]], [[Gore Vidal]], [[James Agee]], and [[Lawrence Durrell]]. Her passionate love affair and friendship with Miller strongly influenced her both as a woman and an author. An apocryphal rumor abounds that Nin was bisexual, promulgated by the [[Philip Kaufman]] film, ''[[Henry & June]]''. Although this rumor is widely believed to be false, Nin's journals leave many questions about her relationship with June Miller, Henry Miller's wife. In her unexpurgated journals, she wrote that she had an incestuous relationship with her father, and she refers to experiments with bisexuality, and sexual relationships and experiences with women.

==Later life and legacy ==
In [[1973]] she received an honorary [[doctorate]] from the [[Philadelphia College of Art]]. She was elected to the United States [[National Institute of Arts and Letters]] in [[1974]]. She died in [[Los Angeles, California]] on [[January 14]] [[1977]]; her body was [[cremation|cremated]], and her ashes were scattered over [[Santa Monica Bay]]. Rupert Pole was named Nin's [[literary executor]], and he arranged to have new unexpurgated editions of Nin's books and diaries published between 1985 and his death in 2006.

In [[1990]] [[Philip Kaufman]] directed the film ''[[Henry & June]]'' based on Nin's novel ''[[Henry and June|Henry & June]]'' from ''The Journal of Love – The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932''.

==Quotes ==
*"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
*"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are."
*"This diary is my kief, hashish, and opium pipe. This is my drug and my vice."
*"...for no one has ever loved an adventurous woman as they have loved adventurous men."
*"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
*"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing."

==List of works==
* ''[[D.H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study]]''
* ''[[Collages (Anaïs Nin)|Collages]]''
* ''[[Winter of Artifice]]''
* ''[[Under a Glass Bell]]''
* ''[[House of Incest]]''
* ''[[Delta of Venus]]''
* ''[[Little Birds]]''
* ''[[Cities of the Interior]]'', in five volumes:
** ''[[Ladders to Fire]]''
** ''[[Children of the Albatross]]''
** ''[[The Four-Chambered Heart]]''
** ''[[A Spy in the House of Love (novel)|A Spy in the House of Love]]''
** ''[[Seduction of the Minotaur]]''
* ''[[The Diary of Anaïs Nin]]'' 7 volumes
* ''[[The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin]]'' 4 volumes
* ''[[The Novel of the Future]]''
* ''[[In Favor of the Sensitive Man]]''
* ''[[Henry and June]]''
* ''[[Incest (book)|Incest]]''
* ''[[Fire (novel)|Fire]]''
* ''[[Nearer the Moon]]''

==Notes==
{{reflist}}

==References==
* [[Deirdre Bair]], ''[[Anaïs Nin: A Biography]]'' (New York: [[George Putnam|Putnam]], 1995) ISBN 0-399-13988-5

==External links==
{{wikiquote}}
* [http://www.anaisnin.com/ The Official Anais Nin.com]
*[http://web.mac.com/retrofocus/iWeb/art/anaisnin.html Unofficial Anaïs Nin website (brand new host in 2007 but online since 1995)]
* [http://www.geocities.com/arsenio_grilo/a_nin_1.html Delta of Venus]
* [http://www.geocities.com/arsenio_grilo/little_birds_1.html Little Birds]
* [http://www.oldkewgardens.com/ss-2-homes-0125.html Anaïs Nin]
* [http://www.sexualfables.com/the_house_of_incest.php The House of Incest]
* [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0316284289 ''The Erotic Life of Anais Nin''], Fitch, Noël Riley, New York: Little, Brown, 1993. ISBN 0-316-28428-9
*[http://www.roberthaller.com/firstlight/hugo.html Ian Hugo]
*[http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/30/us/30pole.html Fox, Margalit. (2006, July 30). "Rupert Pole, 87, Diarist's Duplicate Spouse, Dies", ''The New York Times'']

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nin, Anaïs}}
[[Category:1903 births]]
[[Category:1977 deaths]]
[[Category:American diarists]]
[[Category:Bisexual writers]]
[[Category:California writers]]
[[Category:Erotica writers]]
[[Category:Danish Americans]]
[[Category:French Americans]]
[[Category:French diarists]]
[[Category:French women writers]]
[[Category:LGBT writers from France]]
[[Category:People of Catalan descent]]
[[Category:Roman Catholics]]
[[Category:Spanish-Americans]]
[[Category:Women diarists]]
[[Category:Women writers (20th century)]]

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