Nabokov, Vladimir

Lolita. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1958

8vo (215 x 146 mm). Publisher's quarter black cloth over grey patterned boards, red endpapers, top edge stained red, gဣilt and red stamped spine, original dust jacket; panels lightly foxed, minor edgewear. Housed in a red slipcase with folding cloth chemise.

First American Edition, association copy inscribed by Nabokov to his wife Véra: "Verina verae Nab | Aug. 1958 | Ithaca." Nabokov has further embellished his inscription with a delicately rendered drawing of a butterfly in silvery blue with pink-accented wings (an imaginary species named for his wife, "Vera's Verina"). One can hardly imagine a more poignant association copy, and not only because of their enduring partnership: Véra was one of the novel's greatest champions, going so far as to stop the author from burning early drafts. "Lolita owes her bir😼th to Nabokov but her life to Vera" (Schiff)🍸.

Vladimir Nabokov met and fell in love with the extremely attractive and fiercely intelligent Véra Evseevna Slonim at a masked ball in May 1923, and they were married less than two years later at the Wilmersdorf Rathaus in Berlin, on 15 April 1925. Like Nabokov, Véra was also originally from St. Petersburg, and also from an educated background, though not nearly as privileged or wealthy as Nabokov's. Véra became her husband's lifelong intellectual companion, secretary, manager, and guardian angel. Before they left Berlin she provided the lion's share of the family's income through her wor🌊k as a translator. At Wellesley College and Cornell she conducted research for his lectures, typed them up, and sometimes even delivered them for him.

Nabokov had worked tirelessly on the Lolita manuscript for more than five years between 1948 and 1953, keeping the subject ma🔜tter (the immigrant Humbert Humbert's unnatural love for the all-American girl child Lolita) a closely guarded secret to anyone other than his wife and his then friend, the critic Edmund Wilson. Content sensitivities aside, the greatest challenge for Nabokov, arguably the greatest linguistic stylist of the modern era, was technical, and he often lost🙈 heart and came close to destroying the manuscript. Véra herself never, in the five years her husband spent working on it, had any doubts as to its importance.

This first American edition of Lolita is the first complete appearance of the novel in America (about a third of it had been excerpted in the Anchor Review for June 1957). It was preceded by the first edition published in Paris by the Olympia Press in 1955 (see the preceding lot). The American edition has some minor textual revisions made from the Paris first edition and has an author's afterword, "On a Book Entitled Lolita." In this postscript Nabokov recounts the difficulties he had trying to publish the novel in the United States. He first wanted the book to be issued anonymously, but, "realizing how likely a mask was to betray my own cause, I decided to sign Lolita. The four American publishers...who were in turn offered the typescript and had their readers glance at it, were shocked by Lolita."

The eventual publication of Lolita in New York was an international sensation. It transformed its author from destitute émigré to international celebrity. Putnam's published the book in 1958, and by the end of September that year it was at number one in the best-seller lists. Lolita was the first novel since Gone with the Wind to sell 100🐓,000 copies within three weeks of publication. After theꦿ novel catapulted him to fame, Véra served as his unique liaison with publishers, lawyers, and the media. She was at her husband's side during all interviews and receptions.

An exceptional association copy of one of the greatest twentieth-century novels.

REFERENCE:

Juliar A28.2; Stacy Schiff, Véra. New York: Random House, 1999

PROVENANCE:

Vladimir Nabꦡokov (his Palace Hotel bookplate) — Vera Nabokov (presentation inscription) — Roger Rechler (his sale, Christie's New York, 11 October 2002, lot 234, achieved $163,500)