“At one point, I calculated that the well-known and globally recognized Russian literary production, both poetry and prose, from the beginning of the 19th century onwards, does not exceed 23,000 printed pages of regular size. On the other hand, French or English literature, for instance, has a history spanning several centuries and numerous masterpieces. Thus, I conclude my first observation: With the exception of a significant medieval work, Russian literature can very easily fit within the narrow confines of approximately a century – or even a little more, if we take into account some more recent works of certain value. In short, one century, the 19th, was sufficient for a country without an indigenous literary tradition to produce high-quality literature with a global radiance, capable of being compared – in all fields, except its volume – to that of France or England, whose roots go back many centuries.

This remarkable flourishing would have been impossible if Russia had not made comparable, and indeed accelerated, progress in other areas of intellectual life – so much so that it does not lag behind the great countries of the West in this regard. I am aware that this dramatic cultural and intellectual progress that occurred in 19th century Russia is little known in the West.” B. N. “Thanks to Nabokov's imagination and elegant style, his academic lectures clearly transcend simple teaching and knowledge transmission; they become an enjoyable experience.” New Republic

“As Vladimir Nabokov himself wrote in 1940, even before he began his academic career in the United States, ‘Fortunately, I embarked on the process of writing a hundred lectures – about 2,000 pages – on Russian literature […] which proved to be very useful during the twenty academic years I taught at Wellesley and Cornell universities.’ When the commercial success of Lolita allowed him to stop teaching in 1958, Nabokov planned to publish a book with his occasional lectures on Russian, as well as European literature in general. This plan never progressed beyond the stage of mere thoughts, although already fourteen years earlier, he had published a short text on Gogol in book form, which included a revised version of his lectures on Dead Souls and The Overcoat. He had also once thought about editing a student edition of Anna Karenina, but that plan was also soon abandoned.

The present volume contains whatever has been preserved from his notes regarding Russian writers [...].” From the introduction by Fredson Bowers