- Delta of Venus
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- For the film adaption, see Delta of Venus (film)
Delta of Venus 
First edition cover artAuthor(s) Anaïs Nin Cover artist Milton Glaser
Richard Merkin (photo)Country United States Language English Genre(s) Short stories, erotica Publisher Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publication date 1977 Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback) Pages 250 pp (first edition) ISBN 0151246564 Delta of Venus is a book of short stories by Anaïs Nin. Though the stories were largely written in the 1940s while Nin was writing erotica for a private collector, the book was first published posthumously in 1978. In 1995 a film version of the book was directed by Zalman King. There are multiple short stories in this work with certain important characters reappearing throughout. She deals with many different sexual themes, some of them very taboo— including abuse, incest, homosexuality, prostitution, infidelity, and paedophelia— while maintaining the balance of her life's work: the study and description of woman.
Background
The collection of short stories that makes up this anthology was written during the 1940s for a private client known simply as "Collector"'. This "Collector" commissioned Nin, along with other now well-known writers (including Henry Miller), to produce erotic fiction for his private consumption. Despite being told to leave poetic language aside and concentrate on graphic, sexually explicit scenarios, Nin was able to give these stories a literary flourish and a layer of images and ideas beyond the pornographic. In the introduction, she called herself "the madam of this snobbish literary house of prostitution".
The stories range in length, and are tied together not just by their sexual premises, but also by Nin's distinct style and feminine viewpoint.
References
- Anaïs Nin, Delta of Venus, Erotica by Anaïs Nin, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977, ISBN 0-15-124656-4
- Anne T. Salvatore, Anaïs Nin's narratives, University Press of Florida, 2001, ISBN 0813021138
- Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace, Encyclopedia of feminist literary theory, Taylor & Francis, 1997, ISBN 0815308248, p.190
- Andrew Gibson, Postmodernity, ethics and the novel: from Leavis to Levinas, Routledge, 1999, ISBN 041519895X, p.177
- Noël Riley Fitch, Anaïs: The Erotic Life of Anaïs Nin (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1993) ISBN 0-316-28428-9
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