Ms. Allerdyce, knows her stuff! If you are an Anais Nin fan, and you want a comparitive study, this is the book for you!

Anais Nin lived a life of conflicting allegiances. She attempted to decide whether to be "a woman helping men" or "a creative artist competing with men." Torn between obligations and freedom she shifted her focus back and forth from male to female and from self to other. Acknowledging Nin as an important Modernist and Feminist writer who created an authentic feminine approach to art, author Richard-Allerdyce focuses on how Nin healed herself with writing and psychoanalysis. This in-depth study of Nin's work using the four unexpurgated diaries, has a title by title approach making the book more accessible to readers. Nin's sensitivity changed the nature of life and art and the media-conditioned response to both. Nin wanted to live an active life with no one telling hr what to do. ` The later volumes of the diary showed Nin moving away from polarization of others and self, of fiction and diary, of live and death. Richard-Allerdyce shows how Nin came to understand that opposites are merely fuctions of each other, how the personal deeply lived becomes the univeral Modernism and Feminism helped Anais Nin remake herslf. She showed that women can get over society's programing, education and taboos. She focused on the bond between all women. Her writing was therapy not only for herself but for her readers. She helped them create themselves and their world. This book should become a classic in its field. Maryanne Raphael l