In a message dated 3/5/2010 11:34:04 AM Central Standard Time, chaiselongue@EARTHLINK.NET writes:

On Mar 4, 2010, at 5:41 PM, Jansy wrote:   How familiar would Nabokov have been with du Maurier? With the "incubus/succubus" lore, so pervasive in "The Enchanter" and in "Lolita", less so in his other novels related to seduction and "influence" ?



Trilby was a huge international best-seller, probably setting all-time records.  And stage and film versions proliferated as well, to the point that both "Trilby" and "Svengali" passed into the language, as hat and overpowering master, respectively.

There's a lot of fascinating material about Du Maurier in David Lodge's novel about Henry James, Author!  Author!, which I just finished teaching.  Interesting that the last two writers I've taught in the course ("Writers on Writers") have VN connections; Lodge has written about him, and Saul Bellow's greatest fan was Martin Amis, who has also written about VN.  I didn't teach TRLOSK or PF in this course as I'd done both recently in another graduate class with many of the same students.
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