Despair
by Nabokov, Vladimir
- Used
- Fine
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Fine/Near Fine
- Seller
-
Woodstock, Illinois, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1966. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Near Fine. Fine in a Near Fine second-issue jacket, unclipped ($5.00), lightly toned and soiled. Black cloth with gilt lettering on the spine. Square and firmly bound with a red top stain, former owner's name inside the rear board, clean otherwise. Nabokov's novel that tells "the sardonic story of a man who undertakes the perfect crime--his own murder.
Synopsis
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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Details
- Bookseller
- Carpetbagger Books, IOBA
(US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 7097
- Title
- Despair
- Author
- Nabokov, Vladimir
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Fine
- Jacket Condition
- Near Fine
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First Edition
- Publisher
- G.P. Putnam's Sons
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 1966
- Keywords
- American Literature, Modern Literature, 20th Century Literature, Crime, Murder
Terms of Sale
Carpetbagger Books, IOBA
All items are returnable for a refund within 30 days of receipt.
About the Seller
Carpetbagger Books, IOBA
Biblio member since 2018
Woodstock, Illinois
About Carpetbagger Books, IOBA
Based in the far northwest reaches of the Chicago suburbs, Carpetbagger Books specializes in literary fiction and modern firsts. Inventory is updated weekly, if not more frequently, so browse often. If you are after something particular, don't hesitate to communicate: not all inventory is uploaded online.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Gilt
- The decorative application of gold or gold coloring to a portion of a book on the spine, edges of the text block, or an inlay in...
- Soiled
- Generally refers to minor discoloration or staining.
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
- G
- Good describes the average used and worn book that has all pages or leaves present. Any defects must be noted. (as defined by AB...
- Cloth
- "Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
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