The Mystic of Sex
by Anaïs Nin
The stray pieces, gathered: four decades of essays and reviews, led by the 1930 Lawrence piece that started her public writing.
- 1995
About Anaïs Nin
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeA posthumous sweep of the writing that never made her books: essays, reviews, and articles from 1930 to 1974, titled for the earliest and most telling item — 'The Mystic of Sex,' her 1930 essay on D. H. Lawrence, the first public appearance of the sensibility that became the Unprofessional Study and everything after. Across the four decades the collection tracks her critical voice from the Paris apprenticeship through the fame years, in pieces written for magazines and occasions rather than posterity. (Essays — nothing to spoil.)
The story, in more detail
Every long career leaves a scatter — the review written for a friend's journal, the introduction, the article commissioned and forgotten — and Nin's scatter had unusual range: it begins before her first book and ends with her fame. The title essay is the collection's anchor and its argument: published in 1930, before the Unprofessional Study, it is her earliest public criticism, already reading Lawrence as a mystic of the body — the position her whole aesthetic would elaborate.
Gathered and published in the 1990s wave of Nin recovery, the collection serves two readers at once: completists get the bibliography's missing entries in one place, and critics get the connective tissue — the occasional prose that shows the doctrine of the famous books being tried out, piece by piece, across the century's middle decades.
What's inside
Uncollected prose across four decades and its registers: the earliest criticism, led by the 1930 Lawrence essay; book reviews and literary pieces from the American years; occasional essays, introductions, and articles from the fame decade; arranged to show the through-line — the body, the dream, and the interior life, argued in whatever venue the moment offered.
Themes and analysis
Reading Lawrence
In the title essay, as quoted by Damiana Pereira de Paula, Nin's praise of Lawrence turns on a distinction between feeling and expressing feeling. The failure to express is presented as worse than feeling's absence: experience can be present yet unable to reach another person. Her demand for bodily fulfillment equal to mental life also seeks balance, not the victory of instinct over thought. Read this way, the portrait of Lawrence becomes an argument about what literature should make possible: an expression intense enough to connect sensations, emotions and ideas.
The alarm on Place du Tertre
The title's promised murder gives way to a false alarm, but the threat does not disappear. In the Italian excerpt published by il manifesto, Eduardo begins by describing an attempt to strangle a taxi driver. Later, a ringing street telephone briefly seems to announce the catastrophe he has imagined; the policeman instead reports calm. Laughter releases that suspense without resolving it. At the end, Eduardo touches his companions' necks. The movement from reported violence to public reassurance and back to an intimate gesture leaves unease underneath the scene's comedy.
Why we recommend it
The earliest Nin
The 1930 Lawrence essay is the sensibility's first public appearance — before any of the books.
The connective tissue
The occasional prose that links the famous titles, showing the arguments being rehearsed.
One-stop scatter
Four decades of fugitive pieces, spared the microfilm.
What this book explores
Timeline
1930
'The Mystic of Sex' appears — her first published criticism, two years before the Lawrence book.
1930–1974
The uncollected pieces accumulate across magazines and occasions.
1995
Capra Press gathers the scatter into one volume.
Book editions
Paperback
- Paperback
- Capra Press
- 1995
Reader reviews
Readers may also like
In Favor of the Sensitive Man
The essays she did collect in her lifetime — this volume holds the rest.
Read our take
The Mystic of Sex: frequently asked questions
What is The Mystic of Sex?
A posthumous collection of Anaïs Nin's uncollected essays, reviews, and articles from 1930 to 1974, titled for her 1930 essay on D. H. Lawrence.
What is the title essay?
'The Mystic of Sex,' her 1930 piece on Lawrence — her earliest public criticism, published before her first book, already reading him as a mystic of the body.
When was the collection published?
In 1995, by Capra Press, during the decade's wave of posthumous Nin publishing.
Who is it for?
Completists and scholars first — the pieces are occasional by nature, and their interest is the development they document across four decades.
How does it relate to her Lawrence book?
The title essay is that book's seed: the 1930 magazine piece whose argument became D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study two years later.
If you like Anaïs Nin
Explore authors with a similar voice, perspective, and influence.
Henry Miller
The entangled careers of the Villa Seurat: she financed and prefaced his scandal, he detonated her prose — and each wrote the other into the century's record.
View author
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
The doctor of the Paris slums who wrote the century's blackest, funniest novel — and changed the sound of French prose.
View author
Martha Gellhorn
War correspondent who covered the Spanish Civil War, D-Day, and conflicts across five more decades; Hemingway's third wife, 1940–1945.
View author
References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document The Mystic of Sex, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1The Mystic of Sex
NovelAnaïs Nin, 1995Used 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 verify The Mystic of Sex's bibliographic context and its place within Anaïs Nin's published work.
3Anaïs Nin Papers — diary, March–September 1938
ArchiveUCLA Library Special CollectionsUsed forUsed for independent archival, institutional, or historical context surrounding Anaïs Nin and The Mystic of Sex.
4Anaïs Nin: A Biography
BiographyG. P. Putnam's Sons, 1995Used forUsed to cross-check chronology, publication history, and the circumstances in which The Mystic of Sex appeared.
5Anaïs: The Erotic Life of Anaïs Nin
BiographyLittle, Brown, 1993Used forUsed for an additional scholarly or biographical perspective on The Mystic of Sex and Anaïs Nin's wider career.
6O processo criativo e a personalidade criadora: um estudo da poética de Anaïs Nin no poema em prosa A Casa do Incesto — doctoral thesis
WebsiteUniversidade de Brasília, 2016Used forPrinted p. 27, note 35 quotes the title essay at p. 13; p. 173 identifies the 1995 Capra collection. Read through the repository's public text extraction; no primary-edition collation or visual PDF check was available.
7Trame d'autore/Assassinio sulla Place du Tertre — authorized Italian excerpt
Websiteil manifesto, 1997Used forPublic Italian excerpt of Murder on the Place du Tertre, August 10, 1997, credited to Anaïs Nin and published with an acknowledgment to Fazi. Used for the movement from Eduardo's taxi-driver story through the false alarm to the closing gesture; not a collation with the English edition.
i
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.
Explore more resources