Charging on to the next set of draft pages for the revised and updated bibliography: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. Begun in Paris in December 1938 before he and his family steamed to America, this was Nabokov’s initial foray into long-form creativity in English. While he was still in Europe, he couldn’t find a publisher for the new novel in England or the U.S. Only when he reached New York was he able, with the help of friends, to place it with the new firm, New Directions. It is A21 in the 1986 bibliography.
The first printing of 1941 was issued in 1941 and 1945 in a variety of bindings and coverings. The details of the two issues and the four variants of the second issue are described.
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You note that you have not examined a prepublication copy of Sebastian Knight with dust jacket. I am the owner of such a copy, and you can view it at:
https://staging.airflowsciences.com/rkn/Nabokov/A21.1a/index.html
As you can see, the dust jacket is rather tattered, but it is clearly the “Nabokov” variant.
If you click on the “Bob’s Copy” button on the web page for this book, you’ll be taken to a page where you can view the prepublication stamp as well as the name of the original owner and the date he received it (which preceded publication by one very eventful week).
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