After Nin's marriage to Hugo Guiler, a banker who later became a filmmaker, the couple moved to Louveciennes in Paris. At the time of the writing, Nin and Guiler had been married for seven years.
Nin had been sick as a child. Nin's physical frailty and desire to please a father that did not want her set the author up to always seek out the approval of men who were similar to her father. This is, in part, what she found in Henry Miller.