Iris Owens

Iris Owens (1929-2008), also known by her pseudonym Harriet Daimler, was an American novelist.

Owens, born Iris Klein in Brooklyn, New York, graduated from Barnard College. During the fifties she lived in Paris, where she associated with the group of expatriate writers who produced the literary review Merlin, among them Alexander Trocchi, Christopher Logue, George Plimpton and Richard Seaver. Like Trocchi and Logue, she earned money producing novels for Maurice Giraudias's Olympia Press, which published the Travellers' Companion series of English-language erotica. Owens's four Olympia Press novels, and a fifth which she coauthored, were published under the pseudonym Harriet Daimler.

Owens returned to New York in the sixties. Under her own name she published two more novels, which were well received. The first of these, After Claude, was reissued in 2010 by NYRB Classics.

Works

As Harriet Daimler: Darling, Olympia Press, Paris, 1956 The Pleasure Thieves, with "Henry Crannach" (Marilyn Meeske), Olympia Press, Paris, 1956 Innocence, Olympia Press, Paris, 1957 The Organization, Olympia Press, Paris, 1957 The Woman Thing, Olympia Press, Paris, 1958

As Iris Owens: After Claude, Farrar Straus Giroux, New York, 1973 Hope Diamond Refuses, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1984