8vo. Original red burlap, printed paper labels on cover and spine (spine lightly toned); price-clipped dust jacket (front panel nearly detached, extremities chipped with losses, some touching letters on front panel). Provenance: G.R. Royek(?), ownership inscription dated 15 December 1941 with the note: "from the author" on the front free endpaper, just three days after publication.

"FROM THE AUTHOR"

FIRST EDITION, LIMITED ISSUE, one of 749 copies IN THE FIRST ISSUE BINDING, from a total edition of 1500. The remaining 751 copies were bound in a smooth red cloth and issued in April 1945. Nabokov composed the novel in Paris in 1939 in a cramped one-bed apartment using the bathroom bidet as a desk. Juliar A21.1.