This Hunger
The source: Nin's self-printed portraits, absorbed into this novel's opening.
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Ladders to Fire
by Anaïs Nin
The first Cities of the Interior novel: Lillian's hungers, Jay's Paris, and the party where the whole cast finally assembles.
- 1946
About Anaïs Nin
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeLillian, a pianist whose force of will covers a permanent anxiety, moves from a stalled marriage into the orbit of Jay, a painter who consumes people as material, and Sabina, who unsettles them both. Djuna watches and understands. Nin's first commercially published novel in America (Dutton, 1946) opens the five-book sequence she called the continuous novel. (Full plot below — though the book runs on inner weather, not twists.)
The story, in more detail
After a decade of private printing and rejection, Dutton took Nin on in 1946, and she led with the material closest to the diary: the portraits printed the year before in This Hunger, reworked as the opening of a novel sequence. The plan was explicit — a 'continuous novel' tracing the inner lives of a handful of recurring women, book by book, the way Proust traced a society. Ladders to Fire is its doorway: Lillian's book, with Djuna, Jay, and Sabina taking positions they will hold for four more novels.
The first edition carried a section that later vanished: 'Stella,' the actress's portrait, which Nin cut when the sequence was reorganized for the Swallow Press editions — Stella's story moved into the Winter of Artifice volume instead. Readers have also always recognized the painter Jay: the appetite, the studio, the genial monstrousness are drawn from the Henry Miller of her Paris years, transposed into fiction.
The full plot
The novel opens inside Lillian's marriage to Larry, a kind, muted man she chose for safety and cannot stop punishing for it. Her force — at the piano, in rooms, over friends — is the visible half of a hunger she cannot name; the invisible half is anxiety that whatever she holds will be taken. Djuna, a dancer turned observer whose childhood poverty taught her to read people early, becomes her confidante and mirror: the woman who understands everything and risks nothing.
In Paris the book finds its second panel. Lillian falls into the orbit of Jay, a painter of enormous appetite and no scruples about using the people who love him, and through him meets Sabina, the performer whose sensual assurance is everything Lillian's anxiety is not. Attractions cross: Lillian and Jay, Jay and Sabina, and between Lillian and Sabina something rivalrous that neither will name. The novel closes at a long party — the whole cast in one set of rooms, every relationship lit at once — which Nin stages less as a climax than as a tableau: the continuous novel's players assembled, their patterns set, four books of consequences to come.
Themes and analysis
Force at the piano
Maud Rauturier's quoted passages set Lillian's performance against a room that has arranged people as carefully as pictures. Even the polished floor doubles pianist, instrument and audience into a second display. Her force at the keyboard does not bring the repose this setting promises: her face registers frustrated striving. The contrast makes artistic expression uneasy here. Music gives Lillian a way to expose intensity within the tasteful gathering, but that exposure does not guarantee either satisfaction for her or understanding from those who watch.
Lives sharing the same rooms
Sharing rooms does not mean sharing the same present. Larry repeatedly recalls Lillian as she was ten years earlier, and she feels estranged from the version of herself that he still enjoys. Djuna identifies the larger danger: affection can keep assigning someone a familiar role after that person has changed. The domestic scenes make the novel's intersecting lives more than a matter of assembling a cast. Each relationship also carries a remembered arrangement, and recognition requires seeing beyond it. Understanding that trap, however, does not immediately give Lillian the means to leave.
Why we recommend it
The sequence begins here
Lillian, Djuna, Jay, and Sabina take up the positions they hold for the rest of the continuous novel.
Lillian's portrait
Nin's most sustained study of force as a mask for fear — the pianist who commands rooms and trusts nothing.
The party
The closing set piece assembles the whole cast in one place — a tableau few novels of the decade attempt.
What this book explores
Timeline
1946
E. P. Dutton publishes Ladders to Fire, Nin's first novel from a commercial American house, opening with the This Hunger material.
1963
The revised Swallow Press text drops the 'Stella' section as Nin reorganizes the sequence; Stella moves to the Winter of Artifice volume.
1974
The novel takes its place as book one of the collected Cities of the Interior.
Book editions
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- E. P. Dutton
- 1946
Paperback
- Paperback
- Swallow Press
Reader reviews
Readers may also like
Children of the Albatross
The sequence's second book — Djuna steps forward as its center.
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A Spy in the House of Love
Sabina's own novel, four books on — the sequence's most read installment.
Read our take
Ladders to Fire: frequently asked questions
Who wrote Ladders to Fire?
Anaïs Nin. E. P. Dutton published it in New York in 1946.
What is Ladders to Fire about?
Lillian, a pianist whose confidence masks anxiety, and her entanglements with the painter Jay, the performer Sabina, and the observing Djuna — the opening of Nin's five-novel sequence about women's inner lives.
Is it the first book in a series?
Yes. It opens Cities of the Interior, the five-book 'continuous novel'; the later installments follow Djuna, Sabina, and Lillian in turn.
Do I need to read the series in order?
No. Nin built each novel to stand alone, and many readers start with A Spy in the House of Love — but this book is where the cast and their patterns are established.
Is the painter Jay based on Henry Miller?
Readers and critics have always taken him to be — the character draws openly on the Miller of Nin's Paris years, whose portrait fills her diary of the period.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document Ladders to Fire, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1Ladders to Fire
NovelAnaïs Nin, 1946Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
2Anaïs Nin — biography
WebsiteThe Anaïs Nin FoundationUsed forUsed to place Ladders to Fire within Anaïs Nin's published work and verify its bibliographic context.
3Anaïs Nin Papers — diary, March–September 1938
ArchiveUCLA Library Special CollectionsUsed forUsed for independent biographical, archival, or historical context surrounding Anaïs Nin's career and the period in which Ladders to Fire appeared.
4Anaïs Nin: A Biography
BiographyG. P. Putnam's Sons, 1995Used forUsed to cross-check authorship, chronology, and the work's place in Anaïs Nin's wider catalogue.
5Anaïs: The Erotic Life of Anaïs Nin
BiographyLittle, Brown, 1993Used forUsed to verify Anaïs Nin's bibliography and place Ladders to Fire within the broader chronology of Anaïs Nin's career.
6Anaïs Nin et la quête d'une écriture de l'intime : Étude comparée des influences littéraires de langue française et de langue anglaise — doctoral thesis
WebsiteUniversité de Strasbourg, 2011Used forPrinted p. 338, visually checked with footnotes; selected primary quotations, not a full-novel reading.
7Cities of the Interior — Sky Blue Press public ebook preview
WebsiteSky Blue Press; preview hosted by Everand, 2014Used forSelected This Hunger passages in the public preview, especially Larry's recollections and Djuna's account of fixed roles; not the full novel or closing party.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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