title: Anais Nin: A Biography
author:  Deirdre Bair 
description: Biography of Nin, a bohemian writer best known for her voluminous diary and her sexually explicit fiction. <br />Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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  PENGUIN BOOKS
  
  
  
  
  
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  Delta of Venus
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Partly of Spanish origin, Anaïs Nin was also of Cuban, French and Danish
  descent. She was born in Paris and spent her childhood in various parts of
  Europe. Her father left the family for another woman, which shocked Anaïs
  profoundly and was the reason for her mother to take her and her two brothers
  to live in the United States. Later Anaïs Nin moved to Paris with her husband,
  and they lived in France from 1924 to 1939, when Americans left on account of
  the war. She was analysed in the 1930s by René Allendy and subsequently by
  Otto Rank, with whom she also studied briefly in the summer of 1934. She
  became acquainted with many well-known writers and artists, and wrote a series
  of novels and stories.
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  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,