Anais Nin

Anais Nin (1903-1977) was an American diarist and author best known for the publishing of her journals which broke many barriers regarding women and sexuality. Nin was half Spanish (Cuban) and half French but raised in the United States. After Nin's marriage to Hugo Guiler, a banker who later became a filmmaker, the couple moved to Louveciennes in Paris. At the time of the writing, Nin and Guiler had been married for seven years.

Nin had been sick as a child. Nin's physical frailty and desire to please a father who did not want her set the author up to always seek out the approval of men who were similar to her father. This is, in part, what she found in Henry Miller.

Throughout the course of Nin's affair with Miller and others, the author discovered many things about herself from her desire to submit to a...