The author’s observations on the great nineteenth-century Russian writers-Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Gorky, Tolstoy, and Turgenev. “This volume... never once fails to instruct and stimulate. This is a great Russian talking of great Russians” (Anthony Burgess). Edited and with an Introduction by Fredson Bowers; illustrations.
Austen, Dickens, Flaubert, Joyce, Kafka, Proust, Stevenson
For nearly twenty years, first at Wellesley and then at Cornell, Nabokov introduced undergraduates to the delights of great fiction. Here, collected for the first time, are his famous lectures on Mansfield Park by Jane Austen , Bleak House by Charles Dickens , Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert , Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson , Swann's Way by Marcel Proust , " The Metamorphosis " by Franz Kafka , and Ulysses by James Joyce . Nabokov reveals how these masterpieces work; above all, he teaches us how to read them. Professor Fredson Bowers has edited the lectures from Nabokov's hand-written manuscripts ad teaching copies of his books, providing a text that evokes his distinctive classroom style and the brilliance of his personality. Introduction by John Updike; illustrations.