Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

The characters in VN’s novel Lolita (1955) include Rev. Rigger, a teacher at Beardsley School whom the girls call Rev. Rigor Mortis (“stiffness of death”):

In VN’s novel Lolita (1955) Clare Quilty resembles Gustave Trapp, Humbert Humbert’s Swiss uncle:

When Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) reads Mona Dahl’s letter to Lolita, he does not notice that qu’il t’y (a tongue-twister in the bit of French nonsense quoted by Mona) hints at Clare Quilty, the author of The Enchanted Hunters (the play that was a grand success at Beardsley):

Describing his life with Rita, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) mentions Rita’s vin triste smile:

In a little poem that he composed for Rita Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) mentions The Enchanted Hunters (a hotel in Briceland where Humbert and Lolita spend their first night together) and Diana:

Describing the Night of the Burning Barn (when Van and Ada make love for the first time), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Sophismes de Sophie by Mlle Stopchin in the Bibliothèque Vieux Rose series:

Among the books that Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) brings Lolita, when he visits her in the Elphinstone hospital, is Clowns and Columbines:

This was Tuesday, and Wednesday or Thursday, splendidly reacting like the darling she was to some “serum” (sparrow’s sperm or dugong’s dung), she was much better, and the doctor said that in a couple of days she would be “skipping” again.

Describing the library of Ardis Hall, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Mme de Réan-Fichini, the author of a treatise On Contraceptive Devices:

At the end of VN’s novel Ada (1969) Van Veen (whom Dr Lagosse made the last merciful injection of morphine and who hastens to finish the book before it is too late) mentions a doe at gaze in the ancestral park:

On the eve of Van’s departure from Ardis, Mlle Larivière (Lucette’s governess) reads to Marina (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother) her story about a small girl called Rockette (that corresponds to Maupassant’s La Petite Rocque):