French-Cuban writer Anaïs Nin was BOTD in 1903. Born in Paris to Cuban musicians, she was christened Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell. Raised in Spain and Cuba, she began keeping a diary aged 11, a habit maintained throughout her life. She married banker Hugh Guiler in 1923, moving together to Paris the following year and joining the artistic milieu of the Left Bank. She studied psychoanalysis with René Allendy and Otto Rank (both of whom became her lovers) and published her first work, a psychoanalytical reading of D. H. Lawrence, in 1932. Returning to New York during World War Two, she lived briefly with Rank and attempted practising as a psychoanalyst, publishing her writing at her own cost. Her 1936 novel House of Incest was based on her sexual relationship with her own father. Realising that her life was her best subject, Nin published the first volume of her diaries in 1966. Her frank descriptions of sex and erotic fantasies caused an international sensation. While many critics praised her literary style, psychological insights and bold expression of feminine sexuality, others dismissed her work as pornography (or, at best, rampant narcissism). Nin continued publishing her diaries, the success of which prompted re-publication of her earlier novels, and became a heroine of the sexual liberation movement. She also appeared in experimental films made by Guiler, Maya Deren and Kenneth Anger. In 1955, she married her younger lover Rupert Pole while still married to Guiler, describing her bigamy as her “bicoastal trapeze”. She had a long friendship with writer Henry Miller, and is also thought to have had affairs with John Steinbeck, Antonin Artaud, Gore Vidal and Lawrence Durrell. She died in 1977, aged 73. After her death, Pole published unexpurgated versions of Nin’s work. The 1986 book Henry and June revealed her affair with Miller and attraction to his wife June. Adapted into a film in 1990, starring Maria de Medeiros as Nin, it was the first film to be given an NC-17 rating by American censors.