Books on Anaïs Nin
biographical material - criticism - other -
audio & video -
German Editions -
short bibliography - detailed bibliography -
Articles on A.N.
recommended reading
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Biographical Material
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- Bair, Deirdre: Anais Nin: A Biography.
Bair is the first scholar to be granted access to Nin's original diaries and to have the full
cooperation of Pole and Nin's family and friends. Accordingly, Bair takes pains to treat Nin with the objectivity and critical analysis a
writer, even a "major minor" one like Nin, deserves. This sterling biography clears up confusion on several fronts and offers the best
portrait not only of Nin but of her husband Hugo Guiler, the man who "paid" for Nin's extravagant and, in some ways, pioneering life.
Copyright© 1995, American Library Association. All rights reserved
more information regarding this book
- DuBow, Wendy M. (ed.): Conversations with Anais Nin
(Literary Conversations Series)
Contains 24 interviews dating from 1965-1976, drawn mainly from magazines, with eight appearing in print for the first time. Nin
elaborates on subjects touched upon in the Diaries and speaks of her role in the women's movement and her philosophies on art, writing,
and individual growth.
- Fitch, Noel Riley: Anais: The Erotic Life of Anais Nin.
Fitch draws on Ana‹s Nin's voluminous self-revelations to produce what the publisher says is the first biography of
the French writer--and what turns out to be a wary and defensive work, the very antithesis of Nin's free
spirit. [...] Here, in a work that focuses on her sex life, Nin comes off--perhaps unintentionally--as trivial and culturally insignificant. Fitch overinterprets at the
beginning of her text and is excessively factual toward the end, seeming to have either abandoned her
method or simply lost interest in her subject. In spite of her use of the present tense and some vulgar
familiarities ("Every spring her sap begins to rise"; "Desire makes her body ache"), the author seems
uncomfortable with Nin. No substitute for Nin on herself. -- from Kirkus Reviews
- Franklin V., Benjamin (ed.): Recollections of Anais Nin by her Contemporaries
- Harms, Valerie: Stars in my sky : Maria Montessori, Anais Nin, Frances Steloff.
Biographical sketches of three prominent women whose innovative approaches
to education and literature have had far reaching consequences.
- [Riverside, Conn.] : Magic Circle Press, 124 p.
- Harms, Valerie (ed.): Celebration with Anais Nin.
- [Riverside, Conn., Magic Circle Press, 1973], 147 p. illus.
notes: Record of a weekend dialogue among thirty people at Wainwright House, Rye,
N.Y., in Apr. 1972.
- Martin, Jay: "Always merry and bright". The Life of Henry Miller. Santa Barbara: Capra
Press 1978
- Henry Miller's Book of Friends
- Miller, Henry: Letters to Anais Nin. New York: Putnam 1965
- Miller, Henry: Reflections. Santa Barbara: Capra Press 1981
- Perles, Alfred: Mon ami Henry Miller. Paris: Christian Bourgois 1955
- Schneider, Duane: An interview with Anais Nin. London: Village Press 1973, 35 p.
Criticism
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- Evans, Oliver Wendell: Anais Nin
With a preface by Harry T. Moore
- Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press 1968, 221 p.
The first study of Anais Nin's works
- Holt, Rochelle Lynn: Anais Nin : An Understanding of Her Art
- Hinz, Evelyn J.: The Mirror and the Garden: Realism and Reality
in the Writings of Anais Nin
- Columbus: Ohio State University Libraries 1971
- New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich [1973], A Harvest book, HB 259, 127 p.
- Jason, Philip K.: Anais Nin and Her Critics. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House 1993
- Jason, Philip K.: The Critical Response to Anais Nin
(Critical Responses in Arts and Letters, No 23)
Presents highlights of the critical reception to Nin's short fiction, novels, and diaries, with essays from the 1960s to the 1990s concentrating
on continuing themes of her work rather than particular works. Includes essays by Henry Miller and Erica Jong, and a 1970 interview with
Nin.
PHILIP K. JASON is Professor of English at the United States Naval Academy.
- Knapp, Bettina L.: Anais Nin.
- New York: Frederick Ungar 1978
- Continuum Publishing Company, Literature & Life Series. 178 p., ISBN 0-8044-2481-0
- Nalbantian, Suzanne: Aesthetic Autobiography: from Life to Art in Marcel Proust,
James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Anais Nin
- Richard-Allerdyce, Diane: Anais Nin and the Remaking of Self : Gender,
Modernism, and Narrative Identity
With one of the first critical studies to treat Nin's work as a unified whole, Richard-Allerdyce illuminates Nin's writings as she traces the
development of Nin's theories of gender and the creative self through her experimental fiction, criticism, and diaries. The author frames her
analysis with a Lacanian perspective that complements Nin's recreation of her personal history and her interest in psychoanalysis and
Modernism.
Table of Contents:
Narrative Openings: D.H. Lawrence and House of Incest
Breaking Silence: Transference and Mourning in Winter of Artifice
Exile and (Re-)Birth in Under a Glass Bell
Repetition and Resistance in Ladders to Fire, Children of the Albatross, and The Four-Chambered Heart
Catharsis and Healing in A Spy in the House of Love, Seduction of the Minotaur, and Collages
Narrative Recovery and Narrative Authenticity in the Diary of Anais Nin
- Spencer, Sharon: Collage of Dreams. The Writings of Anais Nin.
- Chicago: Swallow Press 1977
- New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich 1981
Essay and Review Collections and Other Material
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- ANAIS. An international Journal. Anais Nin Foundation, California.
- Franklin V., Benjamin: Anais Nin: A Bibliography.
- Kent, OH: Kent State University Press 1973, 115 p.
- Mason, Gregory H. (ed.): Arrows of Longing : The Correspondence Between Anais Nin and Felix Pollak, 1952-1976
- Nalbantian, Suzanne (ed.): Anais Nin : Literary Perspectives
With all the recent attention on Anais Nin's controversial and sensational life, her real achievements as a literary artist are often overlooked.
This collection of essays, with a comprehensive introduction by Suzanne Nalbantian, probes Nin's literary crafts in its psychological and
stylistic dimensions. The various critics such as Catherine Broderick, Anna Balakian, and Harriet Zinnes examine her artistry and identify
the literary techniques that make her unique as a modernist writer in her fiction as well as in her poetic vision. Others like Philip Jason,
Sharon Spencer, Suzette Henke, Valerie Harms, and Edmund Miller observe the transfer of her psychoanalytical positions to narrative.
This collection of essays includes two previously unpublished letters from her brother Joaquin Nin-Culmell to her husband Ian Hugo, an
analysis by Benjamin Franklin V of her reception connected with the jackets for A Spy in the House of Love, and fresh commentary on her
reception in Japan.
- Spencer, Sharon (ed.): Anais, Art and Artists. A Collection of Essays
- Greenwood (FL): Penkeville 1986
- Zaller, Robert: A Casebook on Anais Nin.
- New York: New American Library 1974, A Meridian Book, 203 p.
contents: Gilbert, S. Foreword to House of incest. Durrell, L. Preface to
Children of the albatross. Wilson, E. Review of Under a glass bell.
Miller, H. Un etre etoilique. Franklin, B. Anais Nin: a bibliographical
essay. Zinnes, H. The fiction of Anais Nin. Schneider, D. The art of
Anais Nin. McEvilly, W. Two faces of death in Anais Nin's Seduction of
the Minotaur. Spencer, S. Anais Nin's continuous novel Cities of the
interior. Kuntz, P. G. Art as public dream: the practice and theory of
Anais Nin. Clark, O. Anais Nin: studies in the new erotology. Balakian,
A. The poetic reality of Anais Nin. Metzger, D. The diary: the ceremony
of knowing. Wakoski, D. A tribute to Anais Nin. Stern, D. The novel of
her life: the Diary of Anais Nin, volume IV (1944-1947) Sukenick, L.
Anais Nin: the novel of vision. Rainer, T. Anais Nin's Diary I: the
birth of the young woman as an artist. Centing, R. R. Emotional algebra:
the symbolic level of the Diary of Anais Nin, 1944-1947. Zaller, Ro.
Anais Nin and the truth of feeling. English, P. An interview with Anais
Nin.
top of page - biographical material - criticism - other -
audio & video -
German Editions -
short bibliography -
detailed bibliography -
Articles on A.N. -
recommended reading
Last Modified: 4 May 2000 Anja Beckmann