Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing his life with Lolita in Beardsley (a small University town in New England), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) quotes a so-called Column for Teens that he used to read in the Beardsley Star:

I did my best, your Honour, to tackle the problem of boys. Oh, I used even to read in the Beardsley Star a so-called Column for Teens, to find out how to behave!

Describing his childhood romance with Annabel Leigh, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions the plurality of inhabited worlds:

Describing the Shadows (a regicidal organization), Kinbote (in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mockingly calls Gradus (Shade's murderer who contended that the real origin of his name should be sought in the Russian word for grape, vinograd, to which a Latin suffix had adhered) "Vinogradus" and "Leningradus:"

The narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita (1952), Humbert Humbert receives a letter from Lolita (now married to Dick Schiller) dated September 18, 1952, on September 22, 1952:

I remember letting myself into my flat and starting to say: Well, at least we shall now track them down - when the other letter began talking to me in a small matter-of-fact voice:

Dear Dad:

In his foreword to Humbert Humbert's manuscript, John Ray, Jr. (a character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions Humbert Humbert's singing violin:

The surname of the protagonist of VN's first novel Mashenka ("Mary," 1926), Lev Glebovich Ganin, seems to hint at Ganina Yama (Ganya's Pit). After the execution of the imperial Russian family on July 17, 1918, in the basement of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg (a city on the Iset River between the Volga-Ural region and Siberia), the bodies were secretly transported to Ganina Yama (Ganya's Pit) in the woods near the city and thrown into the pit.

At the beginning (and then again in Lines 131-132) of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) compares himself to the shadow of the waxwing:

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

By the false azure in the windowpane;

I was the smudge of ashen fluff - and I

Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky. (ll. 1-4)

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain 

Describing his meeting with Cordula Tobak (Van's former mistress, born de Prey) in Paris (a city also known as Lute on Demonia, Earth's twin planet also known as Antiterra) at the end of May or beginning of June 1901 followed by love-making in a drab little hotel, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) compares Cordula to a ballerina:

Describing his first road trip with Lolita across the USA, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions R. L. Stevenson’s footprint on an extinct volcano:

On Wednesday, 24 September 1952, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) revisits Ramsdale: