The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1944–1947
The postwar New York years this volume's geography breaks open.
Read our take
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1947–1955
by Anaïs Nin
The divided decade: Mexico and California against New York, the fiction out of fashion, and the diary carrying a double life it couldn't print.
- 1974
About Anaïs Nin
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeThe fifth volume spans the longest years and the widest map: Acapulco and the Mexico that would become Golconda in her fiction, the pull of California against the New York literary world, the death of her mother, and the lean years when the continuous novel fell out of print and Nin returned to publishing herself. Its warmth is southern — the Mexican entries are among the diary's most loved — and its undertow is the split existence the published text could gesture at but never name. (A diary — the closing pages wait behind the reveal.)
The story, in more detail
Readers of Seduction of the Minotaur will recognize this volume as its source: the Acapulco arrival, the heat and generosity of the place, the expatriates with their imported unhappiness — Golconda before it was fictional. The diary's Mexico is a real discovery, recorded with an openness the New York entries rarely allow, and the contrast becomes the volume's engine: two coasts, two selves, and a woman commuting between versions of her life.
The professional weather is the coldest since the war. The postwar market abandoned the continuous novel — A Spy in the House of Love collected its hundred rejections in these years — and Nin went back to the old remedy, publishing herself when no one else would. Beneath it runs private loss: her mother's death, met in entries of unguarded grief, and the long assessment of what the diary itself had become — too vast to publish, too central to stop. The published text, edited in her lifetime, keeps its great secret (the second man, the second household) off the page; the geography and the silences carry it anyway.
The full story
1947–1955, between three worlds: Mexico first — Acapulco, the beach towns, the light that rearranged her palette; then the shuttle years, California against New York, house-hunting on one coast while keeping a literary life on the other; the self-publishing of the mid-fifties as the novels lost their houses; her mother's death and its long echo; and throughout, the diary functioning as the one continuous country while the visible life split in two.
How it ends — spoilers ahead
The volume closes mid-passage rather than at a door: the two-coast pattern set, the fiction waiting for the rescue that Alan Swallow would bring at decade's end, and the diary's future — publication, the question of the living, the editing that would take a decade — beginning to be discussed in its own pages. The last entries find her where the volume's best ones always do: southward-facing, notebook open.
Why we recommend it
The Mexico entries
The diary at its warmest and most sensory — the discovery of a landscape that changed her fiction's climate.
The lean years, unglossed
Out-of-print novels, rejections by the hundred, self-publishing again at fifty — endurance recorded without varnish.
The reader's dramatic irony
Knowing what the published text couldn't print, the silences of these years read like a second diary underneath the first.
What this book explores
Timeline
1947–1950
Mexico enters the diary: Acapulco and the entries that become Golconda in the late fiction.
1954
Rosa Culmell, her mother, dies; the grief entries are among the volume's centers of gravity.
1955
The volume closes with the two-coast pattern set and the fiction still waiting for its rescue.
1974
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich publishes the fifth volume.
Book editions
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
- 1974
Paperback
- Paperback
- Harcourt / Harvest
Reader reviews
Readers may also like
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1955–1966
The rescue and the countdown to the Diary's publication.
Read our take
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1947–1955: frequently asked questions
What years does this volume of the Diary cover?
1947 to 1955 — the Mexico discoveries, the divided New York–California existence, her mother's death, and the years the continuous novel fell out of print.
When was it published?
1974, by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, edited with Gunther Stuhlmann — the fifth volume of the published Diary.
Is this the volume behind Seduction of the Minotaur?
Yes. The Acapulco and Mexico entries here are the source material for Golconda, the invented port of Solar Barque and Seduction of the Minotaur.
Why are these called the lean years?
Her novels lost their publishers in this stretch — A Spy in the House of Love was rejected by scores of houses — and Nin returned to publishing herself until Alan Swallow took her list at the decade's end.
What does the published text leave out?
The double life she was living between the coasts. The diary as edited in her lifetime kept the second household off the page; the geography of the entries carries the shape of it anyway.