Publication of D.H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study

In 1932, Anaïs Nin published her first full-length book, D.H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study, a critical appreciation of the controversial British novelist whose frank treatment of sexuality had made him a literary outcast in his lifetime. The book was notable for its sympathetic, deeply engaged reading of Lawrence's work at a time when many critics dismissed him.

This early critical work established Nin's voice as a serious literary thinker and positioned her within the avant-garde literary circles of Paris, where she had settled with her husband, banker Hugh Parker Guiler. It was during this period that she formed close relationships with writers such as Henry Miller and his wife June, relationships that would deeply influence both her diary and her fiction.

The book's publication marked Nin's emergence from purely private writing (her diaries) into public literary discourse, foreshadowing her later, more radical contributions to psychological fiction and erotic literature. Though modest in commercial impact, the study demonstrated her intellectual seriousness and her willingness to defend transgressive, sexually candid literature — themes that would define her own later writing.

This period in Paris during the early 1930s placed Nin at the heart of a bohemian, intellectually fertile expatriate community, and the Lawrence study remains an important early document of her critical and psychological approach to literature and sexuality.