Vladimir Nabokov, Letters to Véra

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In 1989, Vladimir Nabokov’s son Dmitri published a volume of his father’s letters – to friends, family, publishers, agents, editors, journalists, and his wife, Véra – designed to “afford the reader unprecedented glimpses of the private Nabokov” (

Selected Letters

, xviii). The “private Nabokov” had, however, already been seen by English readers across his thirty-year correspondence with the American writer Edmund Wilson, first collected for publication in 1979, and for Russian readers in a more recent edition of letters to his sister, Elena Sikorski, published in 1985. The

Selected Letters

, intended to give a “direct and spontaneous portrait of the artist” (xviii), formed the final part of an “autobiographical triptych” that comprised Nabokov’s

Speak, Memory

, the…

3946 words

Citation: Wyllie, Barbara. "Letters to Véra". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 April 2025 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=41354, accessed 28 April 2025.]

41354 Letters to Véra 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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