Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle.

NABOKOV, Vladmir.

Item Number: 22033

London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson , 1969.

First edition. Octavo, original cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the half title page in the year of publication to his neighbors and friends, “For Diane and James from Vladimir Nabokov 12/VII 1969 Montreaux.” Nabokov has also drawn a large butterfly in several colors. Nabokov named the title character in part after his favorite butterfly. An avid collector of butterflies, Nabokov was especially fond of one species with yellow wings and a black body. As a synesthete, he associated colors with each letter; A was connected to yellow, and D to black. He saw a reflection of his favorite butterfly (yellow-black-yellow) in the name Ada. This also makes sense because Ada wants to be a lepidopterist in the book” (David Eagerman). Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box.

Published two weeks after his seventieth birthday, Ada, or Ardor is one of Nabokov's greatest masterpieces, the glorious culmination of his career as a novelist. Scholar Alfred Appel writing in The New York Times Book Review called it "a great work of art, a necessary book, radiant and rapturous" and said that it "provides further evidence that he is a peer of Kafka, Proust and Joyce."