“This book is based in large part upon a personal archive.
Of particular importance are fourteen twenty-minute tapes which contain
extensive conversations with Nabokov and his family and friends. These tapes
have what are probably the only free conversations that Nabokov ever allowed
himself to hold while being tape-recorded.
Other sources: Three note books in which I made notes while
talking and shortly after talking w VN and others, ten index cards, twenty
pieces of hotel stationary.
Nabokov’s letters to
his mother betw 1920 and 1936 (twenty seven pages.)
Nabokov personal
diary for 1952.
Seventy five patgges
of Nabokov family history in notes and letters from Nabokov’s first cousin,
Serge Nabokov of Brussels.
Photo records of all
archival materials that were loaned to me by Nabokov as I worked. In all there
were 1,870 exposures including: letters from Nabokov’s father, correspondence
with Contemporary Annals, letters to George Hessen, Mark Aldanav, 378, Vladislav
Khodasevich, Ivan Lukash, and Yuly Aikhenval’d, let. From Rachmanainoff, ….
Archives: Cambridge,
Columbia U, cornell, Stanford, Wellesley, Thomas and Julia Whitney Foundation
of Washington, Connecticut, Princess Zinaida Scakowskoi of Paris. Hundreds of
people answered my letters…."