Fine Books and Manuscripts

8vo (185 x 123 mm). (Some pale spotting, primarily to preliminary leaves.) Publisher's black gold-stamped cloth (lacking dust jacket, as usual, spine slightly leaned and dulled, very slight wear to corners). FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH, published by John Long one year after Camera Obscura (see lot 174). The book sold very poorly, and was not published in English again until 1966. In his introduction to that edition, Nabokov writes: "At the end of 1936, while I was still living in BerlinI translated Otchayanie for a London publisher. Although I had been scribbling in English all my literary life in the margin, so to say, of my Russian writings, this was my first serious attemptto use English for what may be loosely termed an artistic purposethe book sold badly, and a few years later a German bomb destroyed the entire stock" (quoted in Juliar).VERY RARE: At the time of his 1986 bibliography, Juliar located only 8 copies (the dust jacket present in only one copy; according to Juliar, "it is a very rare book"). According to American Book Prices Current, only 4 copies of this edition have appeared at auction in the last 40 years. Juliar A15.2.