The Enchanter - History of The Manuscript

History of The Manuscript

Nabokov showed it to just a few people, and then lost the manuscript in the process of coming to America and believed that he had destroyed it. However, he recovered it later in Ithaca in 1959, at a time he had already published "Lolita". He reread The Enchanter, and termed it “precise and lucid”, but left it alone suggesting that eventually "the Nabokovs" could translate it. Dmitri Nabokov judged it to be an important and mature work of his father and translated and published it posthumously. The published work also contains two author’s notes (comments by VN about The Enchanter), and a postscript essay by DN titled On a Book Entitled the Enchanter.

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