The short stories in this anthology were 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 and the poet
George Barker), to produce erotic fiction for his private consumption. He has since been identified as Roy M. Johnson (1881–1960), a wealthy businessman from
Ardmore, Oklahoma, who discovered the Healdton Oil Pool. Despite being told to leave poetic language aside and concentrate on graphic, sexually explicit scenarios, Nin gave the stories a literary flourish and a layer of images and ideas beyond the pornographic. In her diary, she jokingly called herself "the madam of this snobbish literary house of prostitution, from which vulgarity was excluded". While using the
Kama Sutra and other writings such as those of
Krafft-Ebing as models, Nin was very conscious that the languages of male and female sexuality were distinct. Although at times she scorned her erotica, and feared their effect on her literary reputation, they have been seen by
sex-positive feminists as pioneering work. ==Short stories==