Vladimir Nabokov, bilingual writer of dazzling masterpieces, is a phenomenon that both resists and requires contextualization. This book challenges the myth of Nabokov as a sole genius who worked in isolation from his surroundings, as it seeks to anchor his work firmly within the historical, cultural, intellectual and political contexts of the turbulent twentieth century. Vladimir Nabokov in Context maps the ever-changing sites, people, cultures and ideologies of his itinerant life which shaped the production and reception of his work. Concise and lively essays by leading scholars reveal a complex relationship of mutual influence between Nabokov''s work and his environment. Appealing to a wide community of literary scholars this timely companion to Nabokov''s writing offers new insights and approaches to one of the most important, and yet most elusive writers of modern literature.
The eighteenth century witnessed the publication of an unprecedented number of voyages and travels, genuine and fictional. Within a genre distinguished by its diversity, curiosity, and experimental impulses, Katrina O''Loughlin investigates not just how women in the eighteenth century experienced travel, but also how travel writing facilitated their participation in literary and political culture. She canvases a range of accounts by intrepid women, including Lady Mary Wortley Montagu''s Turkish Embassy Letters, Lady Craven''s Journey through the Crimea to Constantinople, Eliza Justice''s A Voyage to Russia, and Anna Maria Falconbridge''s Narrative of Two Voyages to the River Sierra Leone. Moving from Ottoman courts to theatres of war, O''Loughlin shows how gender frames access to people and spaces outside Enlightenment and Romantic Britain, and how travel provides women with a powerful cultural form for re-imagining their place in the world.
