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THE EYE

THE EYE

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THE EYE

by Nabokov, Vladimir

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  • first
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About This Item

New York: Phaedra, 1965. First edition. Presumed first issue with publisher's address on copyright page; in presumed first-issue dust jacket printed on white laid uncoated paper and with Trident Press mentioned at bottom of back flap. [Note: Juliar does not assign a priority to the two issues but we believe this to be the first as the points match those on an advance review copy we handled.] Fine in near fine dust jacket with light soiling, slight darkening around edges, and touch of minor wear.

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

Seller
Quill & Brush US (US)
Seller's Inventory #
47742
Title
THE EYE
Author
Nabokov, Vladimir
Book Condition
Used
Quantity Available
1
Publisher
Phaedra
Place of Publication
New York
Date Published
1965

Terms of Sale

Quill & Brush

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About the Seller

Quill & Brush

Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Biblio member since 2007
Middletown, Maryland

About Quill & Brush

Quill & Brush was established in 1976 by Allen & Patricia Ahearn, the authors of the well-respected reference for booksellers and collectors, Collected Books: The Guide to Identification and Values.At present the Quill & Brush is run by the Ahearns' eldest daughter, Beth Fisher. Allen is semi-retired but continues to buy, sell, and perform professional appraisals.

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...
Advance Review Copy
Advance Review Copy, a specially printed copy of the book, generally paperback, which has been produced and distributed by the...
Fine
A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
Edges
The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
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...

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