My 1986 Nabokov bibliography had 12 item types:

The A-, B-, C-, and D-types are standard categories in descriptive bibliographies. I created the other categories out of need, to try to capture the rich biota that has sprung up around his works and publications. By the way, the K category is not for items containing VN works but a catch-all for books “about” Nabokov.

In my work on the new bibliography, I’ve found that I need to create two new item types to account for the large number of compilations of VN’s work that were beginning to proliferate even before he died. They are compilations of works in the languages in which VN originally wrote them and compilations of works that others translated into various languages. I call the compilations L-items and the compilations of translations M-items.

Five Novels, Collins, 1979

I tried to account for compilations in my original bibliography by listing them under the A- or D- items that seemed most appropriate. So, Five Novels, the British compilation issued by Collins in 1979, appeared in my bibliography under the A-item of its first work, Lolita. But what about the other four works, The Gift, Invitation to a Beheading, King Queen Knave, and Glory? If you go to A17 where all of the original and translated (by VN) versions of Дар/The Gift appear, there is no mention of the Five Novels appearance. At that time, I didn’t want to pepper a compilation multiple times throughout the A-item descriptions from which the compilations’ works are derived. And I feel the same way now.

And that goes for compilations of translations. In 1966 Rowohlt published Frühling in Fialta: Dreiundswanzig Erzählungen, Dieter E. Zimmer’s (Dieter, thanks for all you’ve done) compilation of 13 translated stories from the original collections of, to use the English translations, The Eye (A12), Spring in Fialta (A29), and Nabokov’s Dozen (A32).

So, I’ve created the two new item types. Five Novels will appear in the revised bibliography as L3 because it is chronologically the third VN compilation. And Frühling in Fialta will appear as M2, the chronologically second translation compilation. And, you may ask, why are they only the third and the second compilations of their types? What came before them?

In 1962, Il Saggiatore of Milan published Poesie, a collection of translations of 16 of VN’s Russian poems and 14 of his English ones. It is a tight little volume, 18.2 X 11.5 cm, 136 pages, with a black and teal graphic cover. All copies I’ve examined had no dust wrappers. It sold for “Lire cinquecento”. Inside, the 30 poems are translated into Italian on pages facing their original Russian and English texts. So here we have two things: First, a compilation, the first new compilation of VN poems, a compilation not organized by VN (like Стихи (1916), Гроздь, Стихотворения 1929-1951, Poems, and others) but by someone else. And second, we have a translated compilation. That means we have L1 and M1. (No reason a publication can’t be associated with more than one item type.)

But there is one more interesting thing about this collection. The 31st work (counting the originals and the translations, or the 16th Russian poem) had never appeared in a book before. It is the poem “Какое сделал я дурное дело [What is the evil deed I have committed]”. What we have here then is an A-item. Chronologically speaking, it should be A35. Of course, that means that I have to renumber all A-items from Pale Fire, the current A35 on up. The sequence of A-items in the new edition will not fully match the sequence in the old edition.

To Summarize

The new bibliography’s table of item types:

The new items described so far:

• Poezie, Il Saggiatore, 1962, in Italian with Russian and English, will be A35, L1, and M1.
• Nabokov’s Congeries will become A40 (from A39, after the insertion of Poesie into the A-item sequence) and L2.
• Five Novels will be L3.
• Frühling in Fialta will be M2.

As I continue to hack new paths through the VN forest of publications, I’ll pass on the discoveries and set out my signposts.