KEITH HERRMANN
Introduction to the Gift
My interest in Nabokov and his work began more than forty years ago, when I first encountered Ada, or Ardor. I was struck by its complexity and wordplay, presented with a kind of mastery that left a lifelong impression even after a single reading. Over time, I remained drawn to Nabokov not only as a writer but as an artist deeply shaped by exile, family partnership, and an unwavering commitment to craft.
The documents I donated represent a small but meaningful glimpse into Nabokov’s life as a working author — a life sustained by discipline, meticulous negotiation, and the indispensable labor and devotion of Véra, and later, their son Dmitri. For me, these materials underscore that his literary legacy was, in a real sense, a family endeavor: a collaborative creative enterprise undertaken across continents, publishers, translations, and decades.
The backstory: I briefly worked for the McGraw-Hill Book Publishing Company in midtown Manhattan (Rockefeller Center) as an editorial assistant when I was between college and business school during 1985-1986. Publishing was very paper intensive back then, and space to store documents in the file cabinets was at a premium. One day my bosses, the publisher and editor of the College Textbook Division, told me to wear jeans to the office to help out in an office clean-up. My job was to empty the contents out of some old file cabinets to free up space for upcoming textbook projects. When I discovered that there were what I considered to be treasurers inside some of the file cabinets, I asked the publisher and editor if, rather than throw out all the documents, I could take them home instead. They felt that since I was new to the book publishing world, they actually encouraged me to take home the old paperwork and contracts, to study them, and to thereby learn more about the editorial and legal technicalities surrounding books from the inside out. I readily complied with their request and saved documents from the trash.
Upon close inspection of a few of the documents together, they tell a remarkably human—and bureaucratic—story. A U.S. publisher writes to Nabokov in Montreux asking him to sign a document transferring future royalties to his son. Nabokov takes it to the local Swiss notary, who does his job and returns it to NYC, which forwards it to D.C. There, someone explains that an international document needs an apostille. Back to Montreux it goes; Nabokov then travels to Geneva, where a U.S. consular official dutifully apostilles…the notary's signature! Not Nabokov’s! Back it goes, rejected. So Nabokov returns to Geneva for a second round—and this time, the apostille is correctly applied. It’s a perfect case study in how even a genius can have his time wasted by bureaucracy.
My motivation for donating the materials, rather than retaining or selling them, is simple: they belong in a setting where they can be preserved, studied, and placed in dialogue with Nabokov’s larger body of work and with Nabokov scholars and readers. I am thankful that the Houghton Library, with its unparalleled archival stewardship, can offer that home.
It is my hope that this small collection will help deepen our understanding of the unseen work behind the art — the correspondence, revisions, permissions, legalities, and loved ones that are inseparable from the finished page.
Papers related to Vladimir Nabokov's publication with McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1969–1975, Houghton Library, Harvard University (https://id.lib.harvard.edu/alma/99158892945803941/catalog), Gift of Keith R. Herrmann
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