The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1939–1944
The years of printing and obscurity this volume's success pays off.
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The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1944–1947
by Anaïs Nin
After the review: Dutton signs her, the young writers arrive, and the diarist of Paris becomes a figure in postwar New York.
- 1971
About Anaïs Nin
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeThe fourth volume covers the shortest span so far — three years — because so much crowds in: the aftermath of Edmund Wilson's review, the leap from hand press to commercial publisher with This Hunger and Ladders to Fire, and the circle of younger writers, Gore Vidal chief among them, who gather around a woman suddenly famous in miniature. Underneath the arrival runs the old current: the fiction still fighting for its audience, and the diary absorbing the cost of every compromise. (A diary — the closing pages wait behind the reveal.)
The story, in more detail
Success, when it finally came, arrived at an angle. The Wilson review made Nin a name; the names it drew were the young — students, poets, and veterans just back, for whom the diary legend and the Paris pedigree made her an oracle. The volume's most storied friendship is with Gore Vidal, twenty and precocious, then an editor at Dutton: the alliance carried her from the Gemor Press to a commercial house, and its later souring — conducted in novels and memoirs on both sides — became one of the era's running feuds. Here it is at its warm beginning.
The professional story is the volume's spine: This Hunger printed on her own press in 1945, then Ladders to Fire from Dutton in 1946, the continuous novel launched at last, and the reviews arriving with the mixture of awe and bafflement that would follow the sequence for decades. The diary keeps its own ledger throughout — what the public versions of her were costing the private one — and closes with Nin doing what she always did at a chapter's end: getting moving.
The full story
New York, 1944–1947: the Glass Bell aftermath and the second printing; the young circle assembling — Vidal, the poets, the analysands of her legend; the Dutton years and the launch of the continuous novel; Provincetown and Long Island interludes; and the diary's running argument with American literary culture, which wanted her story more than her sentences. The volume ends westward: the first long drive across the country, and the discovery of the other coast that would divide the rest of her life.
How it ends — spoilers ahead
The closing movement is a departure that reads, in hindsight, like a hinge: Nin drives west across America — the desert entries are some of the volume's best — and reaches a California that offers what New York withheld: sun, distance, and a life not yet on the record. The published diary keeps its silences here (the man at the end of that road stayed out of every volume printed in her lifetime), but the geography speaks: from this volume on, hers is a two-coast story.
Why we recommend it
Arrival, complicated
What recognition actually bought: a publisher, a public, and a new set of misreadings — audited nightly.
The Vidal chapters
One of the era's storied literary friendships at its generous start, before the novels weaponized it.
The desert pages
The closing drive west draws some of the diary's most open-air writing — a new key for a chamber instrument.
What this book explores
Timeline
1944–1945
The Glass Bell aftermath: the young circle gathers, and This Hunger comes off the Gemor Press.
1946
Dutton publishes Ladders to Fire; the continuous novel reaches commercial print at last.
1947
The first long drive west closes the volume — the two-coast life begins.
1971
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich publishes the fourth volume.
Book editions
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
- 1971
Paperback
- Paperback
- Harcourt / Harvest
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The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1944–1947: frequently asked questions
What years does this volume of the Diary cover?
1944 to 1947 — from the aftermath of Edmund Wilson's Under a Glass Bell review through the Dutton years and the launch of the continuous novel, ending with her first drive west.
When was it published?
1971, by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, edited with Gunther Stuhlmann — the fourth volume of the published Diary.
Is Gore Vidal in it?
Yes — he enters here at twenty, as a Dutton editor and close friend; the volume records the warm years of a friendship that later became a public feud.
What was Nin publishing in these years?
This Hunger (1945) on her own Gemor Press, then Ladders to Fire (1946) and the start of the continuous novel with E. P. Dutton.
How does the volume end?
With her first cross-country drive to California — the opening of the two-coast existence the next volumes trace.