Nin, Anaïs (1903-1977)

French-born US novelist and diarist. Her extensive and impressionistic diaries, published 1966-76, reflect her interest in dreams, which along with psychoanalysis are recurring themes of her gently erotic novels (such as House of Incest (1936) and A Spy in the House of Love (1954)). Her correspondence with the US writer Henry Miller was published in 1985.

Born in Paris of a Catalan father and a Danish mother, she worked as a model and dancer, but later took up the study of psychoanalysis. She emigrated to the USA 1940, becoming a prominent member of Greenwich Village literary society in New York. She also worked in Paris and Los Angeles.

A biography by Deirdre Bair was published in 1996.