Henry and June: from the unexpurgated diary of Anaïs Nin

Partly of Spanish origin, Anaïs Nin was also of Cuban, French and Danish descent.Her first book – a defence of D. H. Lawrence – was published in the 1930s. Her prose poem, „House of Incest“ (1936) was followed by the collection of three novellas, „Winter of Artifice“ (1939). The quality and originality of her work were evident at an early stage but, as is often the case with avant-garde writers, it took time for her to achieve wide recognition. The international publication of her Journals won her new admirers in many parts of the world, particularly among young people and students. Her novels, „Ladders to Fire“, „Children of the Albatross“, „The Four-Chambered Heart“, „A Spy in the House of Love“ and „Seduction of the Minotaur“ were first published in the United States between the 1940s and the 1960s, and eventually gathered in „Cities of the Interior“. She also wrote a collection of short stories, „Under a Glass Bell“. In the 1940s she began to write erotica for an anonymous client, and these pieces are collected in „Delta of Venus“ and „Little Birds“ (both published posthumously). Penguin have also published „A Woman Speaks“, a collection of lectures and interviews; „Journal of a Wife“, the third volume of „The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1923–1927“; „In Favour of the Sensitive Man and Other Essays“; and „The Early Diary 1927–1931“, which is the fourth volume of her diary. „Henry and June“, a chronicle of her passionate involvement with Henry Miller and his wife June Mansfield, and „Incest“ are volumes of the ‘unexpurgated diary’ of Anaïs Nin, distinguishable from her previously published volumes by the references to both her husband and her love life. The brilliant tale of Anais Nin's true love affair with Henry Miller, and her ambiguous, charged relationship with his wife, June. Drawn from the journals of a single momentous year in Paris, Henry and June provides a wildly lyrical account of a woman's sexual awakening and the disillusion of idealized marriage. Drawn from journals, this book is an account of a woman's sexual awakening, covering a single momentous year - 1931-32, in Paris, when June fell in love with Henry Miller, undermining her own idealized marriage. The question of the outcome of June Miller's return to Paris dominates her thoughts.