New Directions

In the fall of 1938, Nabokov's financial resources were depleted. He solicited a grant from the Russian Literary Fund in the United States, claiming: "My material situation has never been so terrible, so desperate"; the fund responded with $20. Unable to get a French work permit, he cast about for academic and literary opportunities in England and America, and began The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. Sharing a studio apartment with Véra and Dmitri, he composed his first novel in English on a makeshift desk consisting of his suitcase placed over the bidet. The following year, a fellow émigré poet and editor passed on an offer for a summer lectureship at Stanford. Nabokov seized the opportunity and immediately began composing lectures on Russian literature. He also wrote his first story in English, never published in his lifetime: "The Enchanter," a clear precursor to Lolita. In May 1940, he, Véra, and Dmitri boarded the Champlain, in a scene he would poignantly describe in his memoir. He brought with him his lecture notes, and the manuscript of Sebastian Knight.

Nabokov's association with the young steel heir James Laughlin and his new publishing house, New Directions, began at the start of 1941. Laughlin contacted Nabokov for publishable material upon Edmund Wilson's referral, and Nabokov responded with The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, in which the Russian émigré narrator, V., is on the trail of his half brother, the writer Sebastian Knight. Laughlin accepted the novel and commissioned Russian translations and studies, and ultimately brought out Nikolai Gogol (1944), Three Russian Poets (1945), and Nine Stories (1947) before Nabokov left New Directions in favor of more lucrative opportunities elsewhere. In 1954, New Directions was among the American publishers to reject Lolita, but in 1959 commercialized on its success by reprinting Sebastian Knight.

The items listed below pertain to Nabokov's life and career and are the contents of the exhibition at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, on view from April 23 through August 21, 1999. This checklist, primarily of items from the Library's Nabokov Archive, is included here to provide a sense of the rich holdings in this special collection.

Photograph of Véra and Dmitri Nabokov on their Nansen passport, Paris, 1940
Berg Collection

Vladimir Nabokoff
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
New York: New Directions, 1941
Private Collection, New York

Vladimir Nabokov
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
New York: New Directions, 1941
Private Collection, New York

James Laughlin
Typed letter signed to Vladimir Nabokov
New Directions, Norfolk, Connecticut, July 21, 1941
Berg Collection

James Laughlin
Autograph postcard to Vladimir Nabokov
Postmarked Sandy, Utah, September 4, 1943
Berg Collection

Vladimir Nabokov
Nikolai Gogol
Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions, 1944
Berg Collection

Vladimir Nabokov
Three Russian Poets: Selections from Pushkin, Lermontov, Tyutchev
Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions, [1944]
Unrecorded proof copy, printed on thinner and slightly different color stock from other copies
Berg Collection

Vladimir Nabokov
Nine Stories/Direction Two
[Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions, 1947]
Berg Collection