In connection with Michael Strickland’s ‘tesserae’: in the latest issue of The Nabokovian (56, Spring 2006, pp. 38-48) is my piece ‘Lolita: Wellsprings and Influences’, which traces connections between ‘Apropos of Dolores’ and ‘Lolita’. I’m afraid I did not know of the unpublished thesis – mea culpa. I have some of Strickland’s lines of filiation, and some others (the a propos, motoring, dentists, perfumer traders, techniques, verbal echoes, French, monkeys). Penny McCarthy.