The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4

The fourth volume of Anaïs Nin's lifelong personal journals and notebooks. This volume provides the last link in a continuous record of her life. It ends where her now-famous Diary volume begins: in 1931, at the run-down villa in Louveciennes so closely associated with Henry Miller.

In July 1927 Nin and her husband, Hugh Guiler, had been living in Paris for two and a half years. Despite her frequent reflections on their perfect marriage, she felt a growing "duality" of body and mind that was satisfied for a long time by a serious study of Spanish dancing and even prompted a diary within a diary, written by her wayward half "Imagy". While Anaïs remained a devoted wife, Imagy discovered the dangerous joys of flirtation. This led to a prolonged infatuation with the American writer John Erskine. She also renewed her intimate relationship with a handsome cousin, Eduardo Sánchez. During this period Nin produced a remarkably perceptive study of D.H. Lawrence that became her first published book, and she experimented with stories largely drawn from her diary. Yet it was Erskine, on the other side of the Atlantic, who continued to dominate her imagination and emotions until she could once again meet him face to face. The final pages of this book — the most candid of Nin's published journals — reveal how she exorcised the obsession that threatened her marriage and nearly drove her to suicide.

First edition, hardback, in good condition with speckling to page edges and a name writted in pencil in the front cover. Grey cloth binding with purple foil lettering on spine. Dust jacket intact with an additional plastic covering.