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The Annotated Lolita : Revised and Updated
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The Annotated Lolita : Revised and Updated Paperback - 1991

by Nabokov, Vladimir

  • Used

Description

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Used - Good. Used book that is in clean, average condition without any missing pages.
Used - Good
NZ$15.87
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Details

  • Title The Annotated Lolita : Revised and Updated
  • Author Nabokov, Vladimir
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition [ Edition: Repri
  • Condition Used - Good
  • Pages 544
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, New York, New York, U.S.A.
  • Date 1991-04-23
  • Illustrated Yes
  • Features Annotated, Bibliography, Illustrated
  • Bookseller's Inventory # 4029125-6
  • ISBN 9780679727293 / 0679727299
  • Weight 0.85 lbs (0.39 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.08 x 5.18 x 0.94 in (20.52 x 13.16 x 2.39 cm)
  • Library of Congress subjects Love stories, Middle-aged men
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 90050264
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

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About this book

Lolita is widely regarded as one of the greatest books of the 20th Century. The cultural influence of Lolita cannot be understated, and numerous editions have been printed since 1955. The book has been made into movies, plays, and has sparked countless conversations about relationships and the nature of obsession. Even the covers of the later editions have sparked controversy, as they feature potentially suggestive depictions of the famous "nymphet". Unsurprisingly, Lolita is often at the top of banned books lists in high schools.

From the publisher

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was born on April 23, 1899, in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Nabokovs were known for their high culture and commitment to public service, and the elder Nabokov was an outspoken opponent of antisemitism and one of the leaders of the opposition party, the Kadets. In 1919, following the Bolshevik revolution, he took his family into exile. Four years later he was shot and killed at a political rally in Berlin while trying to shield the speaker from right-wing assassins.

The Nabokov household was trilingual, and as a child Nabokov was already reading Wells, Poe, Browning, Keats, Flaubert, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Tolstoy, and Chekhov, alongside the popular entertainments of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jules Verne. As a young man, he studied Slavic and romance languages at Trinity College, Cambridge, taking his honors degree in 1922. For the next eighteen years he lived in Berlin and Paris, writing prolifically in Russian under the pseudonym Sirin and supporting himself through translations, lessons in English and tennis, and by composing the first crossword puzzles in Russian. In 1925 he married Vera Slonim, with whom he had one child, a son, Dmitri.

Having already fled Russia and Germany, Nabokov became a refugee once more in 1940, when he was forced to leave France for the United States. There he taught at Wellesley, Harvard, and Cornell. He also gave up writing in Russian and began composing fiction in English. In his afterword to Lolita he claimed: "My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses--the baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions--which the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way." [p. 317] Yet Nabokov's American period saw the creation of what are arguably his greatest works, Bend Sinister (1947), Lolita (1955), Pnin (1957), and Pale Fire (1962), as well as the translation of his earlier Russian novels into English. He also undertook English translations of works by Lermontov and Pushkin and wrote several books of criticism. Vladimir Nabokov died in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977.

From the jacket flap

The annotated text of this modern classic. It assiduously illuminates the extravagant wordplay and the frequent literary allusions, parodies, and cross-references. Edited with a preface, introduction and notes by Alfred Appel, Jr.

First Edition Identification

Even though Vladimir Nabokov originally wrote the book in English in the United States, he could find no American publishers to accept the manuscript. Nabokov eventually found Olympia Press publishing house in France, and the 1955 first printing of about 5,000 copies sold out fairly quickly. The book was first published as green hardcovers in two volumes, with the price of "Francs : 900" stamped on back wrappers of each copy. Most later editions were printed as paperbacks with both volumes in one book. 

Due to the infamous subject matter of the book, Lolita was quickly banned in much of Europe, but was finally published in the United States in 1958. The American edition found a receptive audience, as it became the first book after Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind to sell 100,000 copies in just three weeks. -

Categories

Media reviews

"...the reader of Lolita attempts to arrive at some sense of its overall 'meaning,' while at the same time having to struggle...with the difficulties posed by the recondite materials and rich, elaborate verbal textures. The main purpose of this edition is to solve such local problems and to show how they contribute to the total design of the novel."--From the Preface by Alfred Appel, Jr.

"Fascinatingly detailed."--Edmund Morris, The New York Times Book Review

About the author

VLADIMIR VLADIMIROVICH NABOKOV was born on April 23, 1899, in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Nabokovs were known for their high culture and commitment to public service, and the elder Nabokov was an outspoken opponent of antisemitism and one of the leaders of the opposition party, the Kadets. In 1919, following the Bolshevik revolution, he took his family into exile. Four years later he was shot and killed at a political rally in Berlin while trying to shield the speaker from right-wing assassins.

The Nabokov household was trilingual, and as a child Nabokov was already reading Wells, Poe, Browning, Keats, Flaubert, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Tolstoy, and Chekhov, alongside the popular entertainments of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jules Verne. As a young man, he studied Slavic and romance languages at Trinity College, Cambridge, taking his honors degree in 1922. For the next eighteen years he lived in Berlin and Paris, writing prolifically in Russian under the pseudonym Sirin and supporting himself through translations, lessons in English and tennis, and by composing the first crossword puzzles in Russian. In 1925 he married Vera Slonim, with whom he had one child, a son, Dmitri.

Having already fled Russia and Germany, Nabokov became a refugee once more in 1940, when he was forced to leave France for the United States. There he taught at Wellesley, Harvard, and Cornell. He also gave up writing in Russian and began composing fiction in English. In his afterword to Lolita he claimed: "My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses--the baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions--which the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way." [p. 317] Yet Nabokov's American period saw the creation of what are arguably his greatest works, Bend Sinister (1947), Lolita (1955), Pnin (1957), and Pale Fire (1962), as well as the translation of his earlier Russian novels into English. He also undertook English translations of works by Lermontov and Pushkin and wrote several books of criticism. Vladimir Nabokov died in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977.

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