Letters to Lawrence Durrell, 1937-1977

Anais Nin and Lawrence Durrell, along with their mutual friend Henry Miller, formed a triumvirate they called the "three musketeers" in Paris during the 1930s. Not only did they support each other's work before becoming individually famous, (Nin for her Diary, Durrell for his "Alexandria Quartet," Miller for his Tropic novels), they formed life-long friendships that endure in their correspondence. For the first time, Nin's letters to Durrell and several of his responses are in print, revealing the origins, depth, longevity and pitfalls of their complex relationship. As Durrell writes to Nin in 1967, "Sometimes one quite inadvertently hurts friends and loses them without meaning to, without wanting to, and spends the rest of their life in puzzled me-fulness, chewing the cud and wondering. Not me. Toujours, here I am, your old friend." Spanning forty years, these letters follow the lives of two important writers from the time they were seeking their authentic voices until each had achieved what they had long sought: literary and personal fame.