Author Guide · Lisanne Swart
Books Written by Anaïs Nin
Anaïs Nin started a diary at eleven, on the boat from France to New York, and never really stopped — the habit outlived three publishers, two husbands she kept secret from each other, and her own softened public version of events. The Anaïs Nin diaries exist today in three overlapping forms: the seven original volumes she edited for public consumption, four Early Diary volumes covering her childhood, and eight unexpurgated volumes published after her death that restore everything she cut. Alongside all of that, she wrote novels, a prose poem, and two collections of erotica. Below is the complete picture, organized so you know exactly which diary you’re looking at.
By Lisanne Swart · 24 books across diaries, fiction & erotica · 1936–2021 · Updated July 2026
Where to start
For the version she wanted public
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931–1934 — the classic, edited entry point, and the volume that made her famous.
For the version she didn’t
Henry and June — the same years, unedited: her husband restored to the page, and the affair with Henry Miller in full.
The Diaries — Original Seven Volumes
Published during and shortly after her lifetime, 1966–1980. The version Nin herself edited for public release, softened and with most references to her husband removed.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931–1934Start here
The volume that launched the entire published diary and made Nin a literary sensation, covering her arrival in the Paris literary world, the publication of her first book on D.H. Lawrence, and the start of her relationship with Henry Miller and his wife June.
Widely considered the best and most important of the seven original volumes — this is genuinely the right place to start, not just the chronological one.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 2: 1934–1939
Her deepening involvement with Henry Miller and the wider Paris circle, as war approaches.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 3: 1939–1944
Fleeing the war to New York, and rebuilding her literary life in Greenwich Village.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4: 1944–1947
Her continued life among New York’s bohemian writers and artists.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5: 1947–1955
Her first trip to Acapulco and the quiet beginning of the double life between two coasts.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 6: 1955–1966
Dedicated to the doctors who saved her life in 1975, opening with the aftereffects of an LSD experience and closing with the publication of Volume 1.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 7: 1966–1974
Published posthumously, ending — as she wished — not on illness but on a joyous, reflective trip to Bali.
The Early Diary — Childhood & Adolescence
Published after her death, covering the years before the main diary begins.
Linotte: The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1914–1920
Begun at age eleven on the ship from France to New York; the self-portrait of a girl finding her voice.
The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 2: 1920–1923
Her growing conflict between the expected role of a young woman and her determination to become a writer.
The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 3: 1923–1927
Her marriage to banker Hugh Guiler and the early years of a union built, from the start, on private separations.
The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4: 1927–1931
The bridge into the main diary, told with more candor than the volumes that follow it.
The Unexpurgated Diaries
Published from 1986 onward by her second husband Rupert Pole, restoring everything the original seven volumes cut.
Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931–1932
The uncut account of the same year covered in Volume 1 of the original diary: her affair with Henry Miller, her fascination with his wife June, and a husband, Hugh Guiler, whose name never once appears in the original published version. Adapted into a 1990 feature film of the same name.
This is the most commercially recognizable single diary title she has, and the clearest illustration of exactly what the original seven volumes left out.
Incest: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1932–1934
Her most shocking volume, detailing a romantic and sexual relationship with her own father and her subsequent search for absolution from psychoanalyst Otto Rank.
Fire: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1934–1937
Continued entanglement with Henry Miller, Otto Rank, and her marriage to Guiler, as her circle in Paris and New York widens.
Nearer the Moon: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1937–1939
Her relationships with figures including Antonin Artaud, told with a rawer, more ornate prose than the edited volumes.
Mirages: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1939–1947
War-era material cut from Volumes 3 and 4 of the original diary, including affairs with a teenage lover and critic Edmund Wilson.
Trapeze: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1947–1955
The beginning of her bigamous marriage to forest ranger Rupert Pole in California, kept secret from her legal husband Hugh Guiler in New York.
The Diary of Others: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1955–1966
The logistics and strain of maintaining two marriages at once, jetting between coasts in what she called her “trapeze life.”
Novels, Short Fiction & Erotica
Nin turned to fiction for what her diaries couldn’t yet say publicly, and later wrote two collections of commissioned erotica.
House of Incest
Her first work of fiction: a surrealist prose poem exploring a narrator’s attempt to escape a recurring dream.
Winter of Artifice
Three novellas drawing directly on the material she couldn’t yet publish from her own diaries.
Under a Glass Bell
A collection of short stories admired by Edmund Wilson, marking a turning point in her critical reputation.
Cities of the Interior
A five-novel continuous sequence — Ladders to Fire, Children of the Albatross, The Four-Chambered Heart, A Spy in the House of Love, and Seduction of the Minotaur — following recurring characters including Djuna and Sabina across her most sustained fictional project.
Delta of Venus
Originally written in the 1940s for a private collector at a dollar a page, this collection of erotic short stories was published the year of her death and became one of the most significant works of modern female erotica.
If you only read one thing from outside the diaries, this is the one people actually mean when they bring up Nin’s fiction — sharp, literary, and unapologetically written by a woman for herself first.
Little Birds
A second collection of erotica from the same commissioned writing sessions, published two years after her death.
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