The Diary of Others
by Anaïs Nin
The seventh unexpurgated volume: two households in balance, the fiction winding down, and the decade-long campaign to publish the diary itself.
- 2021
About Anaïs Nin
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeThe 2021 volume carries the double life through its steadiest decade, 1955 to 1966: the two households now institutions, the continuous novel completing at Alan Swallow's, and the great project — turning the private diary into a publishable book — moving from dream to manuscript to, in the volume's last pages, print. The title names the decade's labor: a diary increasingly about the others in it, as Nin negotiated with the living for permission to publish their years. Edited by Paul Herron for Sky Blue Press. (A diary — the closing pages wait behind the reveal.)
The story, in more detail
By the late fifties the trapeze had become a settled orbit, and the journal's drama moved from concealment to construction: rereading forty years of diaries, weighing what could be printed while Guiler, Miller, and the rest were alive to read it, and conducting the negotiations — legal, marital, literary — the published sixth volume could describe only from outside. The 'diary of others' is her own rueful phrase for the project's paradox: to publish herself she needed everyone else's consent, and the asking fills these pages.
The volume doubles as the record of her fiction's last seasons — Cities of the Interior assembled, Seduction of the Minotaur and Collages written, Swallow's faith holding the list together — and of the two men's parallel decades, recorded with the ledger's usual fairness. It ends at the same door as the published sixth volume, now with the mechanism visible: spring 1966, the first Diary in press, and a life spent hiding about to become famous for candor.
The full story
1955–1966, uncut: the settled bicoastal orbit and its maintenance; the legal unwinding of the Arizona marriage; the last fiction and the Swallow rescue; the LSD experiment and the widening California circle; and the decade's spine — the editing of the diary inside the diary, with the permissions, refusals, and self-censorships that produced the 1966 text recorded as they happened, by the person doing the cutting.
How it ends — spoilers ahead
The volume ends in the spring of 1966 with the first Diary published and the reviews arriving — the moment the woman who had spent a lifetime administering secrecy became a public institution of intimacy. The journal registers the irony in full. One volume of the unexpurgated series remains: the fame, the illness, and the ending, in A Joyous Transformation.
Why we recommend it
The editing, on the record
For anyone who has read the 1966 Diary, this is the room where it was built.
The orbit at equilibrium
The double life in its long steady state — less scandal than Trapeze, more texture.
Completing the frame
With this volume the unexpurgated series reaches the eve of fame; the two diary projects finally converge.
What this book explores
Timeline
1955–1959
The bicoastal orbit stabilizes; the Arizona marriage is legally unwound; Swallow gathers the fiction.
1959–1965
The last novels appear while the diary is reread, cut, and negotiated toward print.
1966
The first Diary is published; the volume closes as the fame begins.
2021
Sky Blue Press publishes the volume, edited by Paul Herron.
Book editions
Paperback
- Paperback
- Sky Blue Press
- 2021
Reader reviews
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The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1955–1966
The same years as edited in her lifetime — the outside of this volume's inside.
Read our takeThe Diary of Others: frequently asked questions
What years does The Diary of Others cover?
1955 to 1966 — the settled years of the double life, the last of the fiction, and the long preparation of the diary for its 1966 publication.
When was it published?
2021, by Sky Blue Press, edited by Paul Herron — the seventh volume of the unexpurgated series.
What does the title mean?
It is Nin's own phrase for the decade's project: to publish her diary she had to secure the consent of the people in it, and the negotiations made the journal, for a time, a diary of others.
Does it explain the published Diary's cuts?
Yes — it is the primary record of them. The permissions sought, the refusals, and Nin's own decisions about what 1966 could print are documented as they happened.
How does it end?
With the first Diary published in the spring of 1966 and fame arriving — the threshold the final unexpurgated volume crosses.