About / Кстати

This website is designed to provide the reader of Vladimir Nabokov’s The Gift with a quick and convenient reference regarding various aspects of the narrative. Concordance, visual commentary, electronic appendices and indexes (Dramatis personae, Flora and fauna, Color distribution, and Toponymy) serve as a supplement to the printed edition: Yuri Leving. Keys to The Gift. A Guide to V. Nabokov’s Novel (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2011).

The goal of this monograph is to systemize in a coherent and clear way the main data available on Vladimir Nabokov’s The Gift, from passing mentions in the private correspondence to newspaper reviews and scholarly articles, accumulated during the seven decades since its first appearance in print, and to make the novel ultimately accessible to any interested reader without prior deep knowledge of Russian history or literature.

I would like to thank all the students in my “Nabokov” classes taught at Dalhousie University since 2007, who enthusiastically contributed to this electronic concordance to The Gift.

Without the cooperation of Dmitri Nabokov in giving me access to materials in archives and permission to make use of them, this project would be a much poorer thing. I am grateful to Dmitri Vladimirovich and the Nabokov Estate for permission to quote from the writer’s works, published and unpublished.

Dr. Isaac Gewirtz of the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library and Dr. Alice L. Birney of the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress have greatly facilitated my work with the Nabokov materials.

Finally, I wish to acknowledge the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and of Dalhousie University.

Yuri Leving,

Editor

NOTICE ON COPYRIGHT

This is a non-commercial educational project open for scholars and general readership.

Book covers: V. Nabokov. The Gift. Book covers of various US, UK and Russian editions. These images are of book covers, and the copyright for them is most likely owned either by the artist who created the cover or the publisher of the book. It is believed that the use of low-resolution images of book covers to illustrate an article discussing the book in question qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law.

For quotations from the novel this site has adopted the following edition:

V. Nabokov. The Gift. Translated from the Russian by Michael Scammell with the collaboration of the author. Vintage International; Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc. New York, 1991 (ISBN: 0679727256).

The handwriting samples on the main page (for example, the "Chapters" clickable buttons and others) belong to Vladimir Nabokov and have been extracted from the manuscript of The Gift itself.

The commentary provided in this concordance to Vladimir Nabokov’s novel The Gift is the result of original work of scholars and students of RUSN / ENGL 3820: Nabokov class, taught by Dr. Leving at Dalhousie University. Please provide a proper citation when using materials from this website.

Paintings, photographs, maps, and other works of visual art are used on this site for identification and critical commentary, including images illustrative of a particular technique or school.

The contributors for this site make every effort to provide proper attribution to the author or source of a work, even if it is in the public domain. For legal definitions and guidelines see the relevant articles on Wikipedia (generally accepted among editors and considered a standard that all users should follow):

Your feedback is welcome, please contact us:

Email: yleving@gmail.com