8vo. Publisher’s blue-stamped brown cloth; hinges cracked; brown cloth, spine stamped in blue. Orignal dust-jacket; lower panel lightly rubbed, shelf wear to spine, light wear to top edge and one small closed tear to upper joint. In a cloth slipcase.

Juliar A14.2; variant c, in the brown cloth, without priority

First edition of Nabokov’s english revision of his russian novel, kamera obskura (1932), correcting the travesty perpetrated by Winifred Roy in his 1935 English translation for John Long. Interestingly, Nabokov worked from Roy’s botched text, rather than translating from his own original.

The New York Times review of VN’s 1938 translation was rather mixed, it identifies the novel as a “slight but expertly fashioned…psychological novel,” but faults VN for his lack of “real sympathy for any of his characters,” offering a conclusion he must have appreciated: “it is a pity that so polished and graceful a novel should have to go out into a hard and cynical world with a comparison to Dostoievsky on its dust wrapper” (Harold Strauss, May 8, 1938).