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I felt that I would break out in some wild, disruptive fit of blind, furious rebellion against my life, against the domination of man, my desire for a free artist life…. A fear of the wildness of my fever and despair, of the excessiveness of my melancholy. Then I sat at my typewriter, saying to myself, “Write, you neurotic, you weakling, you weakling, you; rebellion is a negative form of living. Write!”
At the time of her death in 1977 Anais Nin had published ten volumes of fiction, two works of literary criticism, two collections of essays and speeches, and six volumes of her Diaries, these selected and edited from the enormous personal journal Nin began keeping in 1914 when she was 11 years old. Other books have appeared since her death (Linotte: The Early Diary of Anais Nin: 1914-192020; The Diary of Anais Nin: 1966-197416; and the two collections of erotic stories, Delta of Venus11 and Little Birds)21; more books are still scheduled for publication. Before 1966 when the first volume of the Diary appeared, Nin and her writings were known only to a small group of enthusiastic readers. It was the Diary that brought her public recognition, such literary honors as the French Prix Sevigné and admission to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, as well as her informal position as an always controversial spokeswoman for the women's movement. Nin's fame coincided, then, with the “second wave” of feminism of the