Letters To Vera Apr 2026

: The edition includes nearly 200 pages of endnotes by editors Olga Voronina and Brian Boyd, identifying almost every person and butterfly Nabokov mentions, making it a "gold standard" for scholars. Purchase Information

Letters to Véra is a monumental collection of correspondence from the 20th-century master Vladimir Nabokov to his wife, Véra Slonim. Spanning from their first meeting in 1923 until his death in 1977, the volume provides an intimate, often playful, and sometimes excruciatingly raw look into one of literature's most enduring marriages. Letters to Vera

The book is widely available at major retailers and specialty bookstores: : Paperback available for ~$25.00. Penguin Random House : Direct purchase for ~$25.00. : The edition includes nearly 200 pages of

: Options for bulk orders (25+ copies) starting at ~$368.75. The book is widely available at major retailers

: Reviewers from The Guardian and The Hudson Review note that while the letters often focus on "trifles" like weather and menus, they also reveal the seeds of Nabokov’s later masterpieces. You see him "scrounging up detail" for his fiction, from the smell of a hotel room to the specific blue of a lake.

: Because Véra destroyed her own letters, the dialogue is one-sided. However, Nabokov's constant refrain of "Why aren't you writing me?" and his use of elaborate pet names—like "poochums" and "mousikins"—offer a vivid sense of her role as his primary muse and editor.