American Stories
In sheer volume, Nabokov's American stories were dwarfed by his Russian output. Between the completion of his first novel in English, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, in 1939, and…
The New Yorker
Nabokov's first contribution to The New Yorker was "Literary Dinner," a poem that appeared on April 11, 1942. It was followed in June by a poem, "The Refrigerator Awakes," composed…
Conclusive Evidence. New York, 1951
Speak, Memory. New York, 1967 In 1946, Nabokov wrote to Doubleday that he was planning "a new kind of autobiography, or rather a new hybrid between that and a novel."…
Lepidopterological Papers, 1941-53
"From the age of seven, everything I felt in connection with a rectangle of framed sunlight was dominated by a single passion," Nabokov wrote in Speak, Memory. Butterfly collecting was…
Lectures on Russian Literature
Nabokov had secured his May 1940 exit from Paris with the promise of a summer stint teaching creative writing - primarily drama - and Russian literature the following year at…
Lectures on Literature
Stories of Nabokov's presence on campus and his lecture style have grown beyond local legend. Cornell alumni recall Véra as a near appendage to the professor - she passed out…
Pnin. Garden City, New York, 1957
Knowing from the start that he might never find a publisher for Lolita - and that if he did, he might have to resign his Cornell position - Nabokov began…
Pale Fire. New York, 1962
Nabokov called Pale Fire's form "specifically, if not generically, new." "Generically," perhaps, it is his answer to the verse novel exemplified by Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. Specifically, it is centered on…
Eugene Onegin. New York, 1964
In a 1937 lecture delivered in Paris on the centennial of Pushkin's death, Nabokov claimed that reading Pushkin was "without a single exception . . . one of the glories…
The Nabokov-Wilson Correspondence
Nabokov's relationship with Edmund Wilson was the most public of the close friendships of his American career. In the introduction to his edition of 264 letters exchanged by the pair…
Ada, or Ardor. New York, 1969
Nabokov once referred to Ada as his "most cosmopolitan and poetic novel." Simultaneously a family epic of the Russian aristocracy, a literary history of Russia, and a meditation on the…
Poems and Problems. New York, 1970
Poems and Problems includes thirty-nine of Nabokov's Russian poems with English translations printed on facing pages at his insistence; fourteen English poems, all of which had appeared in Doubleday's 1959…
Strong Opinions. New York, 1973
This assortment of twenty-two "interviews," eleven letters, nine articles, and five lepidopteral papers covers Nabokov's views on every facet of his multiple careers. As a result of his stringent rules…
Transparent Things. New York, 1972
This novella, a National Book Award nominee, was published separately after first appearing in the December 1971 issue of Esquire. Reviewers scarcely knew what to make of this deceptively slim…
Look at the Harlequins! New York, 1974
Still largely overlooked in critical circles, Look at the Harlequins! recounts the autobiography of Vadim Vadimych N., whose life and work seem to parody the biography a wayward scholar might…
Reading Nabokov by Brian Boyd, Reply by Robert M. Adams
In response to The Wizard of Lake Cayuga (January 30, 1992) To the Editors: Robert Adams reviews the biographical side of my Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years with great sympathy…
Nabokov carried tradition of gentleman naturalist into mid-century
Although writer Vladimir Nabokov often used a hand lens for his taxonomic study of butterflies, historian Daniel Alexandrov may be the first to treat Nabokov himself as a "lens," specifically…
The Cinematography of Nabokov
Developments in technology frequently have profound effects upon literature, and not merely in the sense that technological hardware appears in fictional works. Even the structure and style of literary work…
Nabokov as Translator
An examination of his changing doctrine of translation Because human beings speak many thousands of mutually unintelligible languages, translation of materials from the languages in which they were originally written…
how to read nabokov & not go nuts
Before heading into Pnin and Ada and beyond, I just thought I'd share what I've learned about the actual mechanics of reading Nabokov, which isn't at all tricky or particularly…