An unusual collection of four items of Anaïs Nin-related British publishing ephemera from the archive of the literary biographer and translator, Margaret Crosland: Crosland was the French literature consultant for the British publisher Peter Owen and seems, according to the 1958 correspondence here, to have had a hand in helping arrange the terms for Children of the Albatross, the
second novel in Nin’s Cities of the Interior series, and the first of her works set to be published by Peter Owen: “as Anais is anxious to get published quickly, I think we had better close with him, don’t you?” asked Mark Paterson, the literary agent apparently representing Nin (also discussing other publishers considering Nin’s works). By 1958 almost all the diarist’s works were out of print and she was relying on the Anaïs Nin Press (her small press founded in 1942) to make her titles available, something Peter Owen discouraged both for his own interests as well as being potentially “ruinous to her own reputation”. The carbon copy seems to be Peter Owen’s original terms for taking on Nin: after outlining them, he writes: “On this first book we are not paying any advance, as arranged, because it is a gamble,” and emphasises: “We would do our utmost to launch Anais Nin here.” Children of the Albatross, however, wouldn’t be issued by Owen until 1978, by which time the publisher’s tighter terms included some printing costs being covered by Nin’s husband Hugo Guiler, and that the firm would get a share of the American royalties.
While Peter Owen and Nin had a tricky relationship, in her hand-written note to Crosland, the French-American diarist wrote, intriguingly, and with a hint of intimacy: “For Margaret, who knows the difficulties of the journeys, external and internal, [...] Anaïs”. [ref: 3317]