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The Collected Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (published first as The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, in 1995) comprises sixty-five stories. Four sets of ‘Nabokov's dozens’ (each containing thirteen works) appeared in four lifetime collections, published from 1958 to 1976. A fifth ‘set ’ – the remainder – are included in The Collected Stories, edited by Dmitri Nabokov, and the whole is reordered chronologically.
The make-up of the four 1958–76 ‘dozens’ was part convenience, part selection, and to an extent was arbitrary, with the rediscovery of certain neglected pieces playing a part as well as ‘theme, period, atmosphere, uniformity, variety’ (CSVN, p. xiv). Original publication had in any case involved a variety of stages and locations: Russian émigré periodicals, the three collections published in Russian (two in Europe in the 1930s and a third in New York in 1956); one story written in French (‘Mademoiselle O’, 1939); and ten stories written in English, placed in American outlets over the 1940s and 1950s. The non-English stories were ‘Englished’ together with various collaborators (nearly all, in fact, with Dmitri, other than the few early versions made with others). All of these translations had Nabokov's close involvement and have his final authorization as texts. The English stories all appeared in Nabokov's Dozen (1958), except for ‘The Vane Sisters’ (written in 1951, rejected then by The New Yorker and first published only in 1959), together with ‘Mademoiselle O’ and three evidently favoured Russian stories (‘Spring in Fialta’, ‘The Aurelian’, and ‘Cloud, Castle, Lake’). In the 1970s three further ‘dozens’ followed, the third of which, Details of a Sunset and Other Stories, was called by Nabokov ‘the last raisins and petit-beurre toes from the bottom of the barrel’ (SL 548), although it included several pieces of indisputable value and very considerable Nabokovian interest (‘The Return of Chorb’, to take just one).
However, ‘the bottom of the barrel’ had still not been reached. This description was also applied to a preliminary list of nine stories, working towards a final set of thirteen (posthumously attained), which Nabokov had long been planning to ‘English’ (CSVN, p. xvii). One work of those listed, the novella The Enchanter, was issued separately in 1986.
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