Vladimir Nabokov

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  1. Vladimir Nabokov on Chekhov

    In a lecture posthumously published in 1981, Vladimir Nabokov commended the brooding works of his countryman Anton Chekhov to contemporary readers.

    Vladimir Nabokov
    A black and white diptych of Vladimir Nabokov and Anton Chekhov
    Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Bettmann / Getty; Hulton Deutsch / Getty

  4. On Chekhov

    Vladimir Nabokov, who died in 1977, came late to his American reputation. But long before the publication of Lolita brought him fame—in 1958, eighteen years after his arrival in this country—he had achieved local renown at Wellesley and at Cornell, where during the 1940s and 1950s he lectured on Russian and European literature. This essay on Chekhov, which has never previously been published, is drawn from Nabokov’s lecture notes for his masterly course on the poets and novelists of his native country.

    Vladimir Nabokov