Anais Nin was a serious journal-keeper.  Though she also wrote a bunch of erotica – aka, sexy stories – she’s probably best known for keeping the diary she started when she was 11.  In her life, she completed eleven volumes of journals, which are so scorchingly honest you feel like your hair has been set on fire when you read them. 

Anais was born in Neuilly, France, in 1903; both of her parents were musicians.  Her Mom and Dad were divorced when she was just a kidlet, and then Mom moved her and her brother to New York.  Anais was a looker, and quit school at 16 to become a model.  It’s through her modeling that she met a ton of artists and intellectuals, whom she dallied with even after she married a banker named Hugh Guilier, who was something of a bore.  Anais’s most famous love affair was with the novelist Henry Miller, who shocked the world with his super sexual books; he was even charged with obscenity.  Anais and Henry led a bohemian life, complete with affairs and lots of drink and heaps of arty friends.  I guess Henry's womanizing got a little old, though.  She eventually dumped Henry, and took up with a younger man named Rupert Pole. Rupert was sixteen years younger than Anais (she was 44 at the time), and was a trained forester and calligrapher (!).  They ran off to Arizona and California, and lived the Western boho life.  Though she was still married to Hugh, she also married Rupert – though she eventually had her marriage to Hugh annulled.

When she died in 1977, her journals were published, causing sensation and scandal.  She wrote about sex, her dreams, her desires – readers around the world just ate her words right up, as you might expect after the life she’d led.  Anais was super pretty, and kind of fairy-like; she wore silky scarves and lots eye makeup.  I think she was the type who’d steal your boyfriend, but because of her flaming-hot diaries she still qualifies for the Good Girl Hall of Fame.