The eight lots of Nabokov books that the Bloomsbury auction house in London offered today (see my posting of 13 February) didn’t do very well. Only two sold: a jacketed 1938 Bobbs-Merrill copy of Laughter in the Dark (A14.2) went for £450 ($683) and Stikhotvoreniia 1929–1952 / Poems 1929–1952 (A27.1), inscribed and with a flutter of little butterflies, went for £3800 ($5764). The prices are exclusive of the 24% buyer’s premium.

Also, on 17 February, the Bonhams auction house in San Francisco sold one of two Nabokov lots (see my posting of 18 January), a copy of Gornii put’ / The empyrean path (A6.1) for $1000, including the premium.