Delta of Venus

Artist expats in Paris, erotic journal entries, odysseys of self discovery, the small but sensual luxuries of good coffee, silk stockings, rugs and tapestries, skin so luminous it glows in the dark, quick and intense female friendships and the subversive power of women’s language... We collected passages from Anaïs Nin’s diaries to create Les Cahiers Secrets.

For a new generation of women, Anaïs Nin is the voice of their erotic and creative inner worlds. Her story is one of multiple lives, both as a writer and a private individual. Living in 1930s Paris she became part of the literary scene, financially and creatively supporting a community of other authors. During the 1940s, the short erotic stories she wrote for a dollar a page made her a pioneer of female-authored erotica, though she would not publish these until just before her death. Finally in 1966, thanks to the second-wave feminist interest in female authorship, The Diary of Anaïs Nin was published by Harcourt Brace and her literary star began to rise. After her death however, her work was overshadowed by the sordid revelations of her unexpurgated diaries, along with the scandal of her bigamous, bi-coastal double life. It’s only in the age of the internet that her lyrical expression of femininity has been fully embraced.