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Bibliography

 

Aubert, Jacques-F.: Papillons d'Europe. 2 vols. Neuchâtel: Delachaux & Niestlé, vol.1 1961, vol.2 1968

Bergmann, Arno: Die Großschmetterlinge Mitteldeutschlands. 5 vols. Jena: Urania,  1951–1955

Berge, Friedrich: Schmetterlingsbuch oder allgemeine und besondere Naturgeschichte der Schmetterlinge. Stuttgart: Hoffmann, 11842. Fr. Berge's Schmetterlings-Buch, ed. H. von Heinemann. Stuttgart: Verlag für Naturkunde, 81899, reprint Augsburg: Weltbild, 1998. Fr. Berge's Schmetterlingsbuch, ed. Hans Rebel. Stuttgart: Schweizerbart, 91910

Boyd, Brian: Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990

Boyd, Brian: Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991

Boyd, Brian / Robert Michael Pyle (eds.): Nabokov's Butterflies: Unpublished and Uncollected Writings. Boston: Beacon Press, 2000

Bridges, C.A.: Catalogue of Lycaenidae & Rhiodinidae. Lepidoptera, Rhopalocera. Urbana, Illinois (published by the author) 1988

Butler, Diana: "Lolita Lepidoptera". In: New World Writing (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), 16, 1960, p. 58–84. Reprinted in: Critical Essays on Vladimir Nabokov (ed. Phyllis A. Roth). Boston, Massachusetts: G.K. Hall, 1984, p. 59–73. (An article more or less equating Humbert Humbert's passion for nymphets with Nabokov's passion for butterflies, and Lolita with what Butler wrongly assumed to be "the most important butterfly of Nabokov's life," Lycaeides argyrognomon (= Plebejus idas) sublivens Nabokov, even rhyming Lycaeides with Haze. The argument rests mainly on the fact that the time of the hunt for the female of sublivens [Lep18] coincided with the writing of the novel. In an interview [StrOps 96], Nabokov recalled "the essay by a young lady who attempted to find entomological symbols in my fiction". He went on, "The essay might have been amusing had she known something about Lepidoptera. Alas, she revealed complete ignorance and the muddle of terms she employed proved to be only jarring and absurd". In a letter to Page Stegner (October 14, 1966), Nabokov was still more outspoken: "Mrs. Butler's article is pretentious nonsense from beginning to end."

Carter, David: Butterflies and Moths. New York (Dorling Kindersley) 1992. (A good and all too short "visual guide" to over 500 species of butterflies and moths from all over the world that has been translated into many languages.)

Chinery, Michael: Farfalle d'Italia e d'Europa. Novara: Istituto Geografico De Agostini, 1990. (A popular manual, translated from the English, with quite a few butterflies but no moths.)

D'Abrera, Bernard: The Butterflies of South America. Victoria: Hill House, 1984

Eaton, John L.: Lepidopteran Anatomy. New York: Wiley, 1988

Eckstein, Karl: Die Schmetterlinge Deutschlands. Stuttgart: Lutz, 1913. (One of the smaller manuals of Middle European butterflies and moths of the time. The figures in some of the later reprints are abominable, but in the first edition there are some that are all right, given that those were the early days of 'chromolithography'.)

Eckstein, Karl: Die Kleinschmetterlinge Deutschlands. Stuttgart: Lutz, 1933

Ehrlich, Paul R.: "The Comparative Morphology, Phylogeny and Higher Classification of the Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidae)". The University of Kansas Science Bulletin (Lawrence, Kansas), 39 (8), 1958, p. 305–370

Essig, E.O.: A History of Entomology. New York: Hafner, 1965

Feltwell, John: The Encyclopedia of Butterflies. New York: Prentice Hall, 1993

Forister, Matthew L. / Zachariah Gompert / James A. Fordyce / Chris C. Nice: "After 60 years, an answer to the question: what is the Karner blue butterfly?". Biology Letters, 7, 2011, p. 399-402

Forster, Walter & Theodor A. Wohlfahrt: Die Schmetterlinge Mitteleuropas, 5 vols. Stuttgart (Franckh'sche) 1954–1981

de Freina, Josef J. & Thomas J. Witt: Die Bombyces und Sphinges der Westpalearktis. 2 vols. München: Edition Forschung & Wissenschaft, 1987–1990

Gornostaev, Georgii Nikolaevich: Nasekomye. Moscow: ABF, 1998

Gozmány, László: Vocabularium nominum animalium Europae septem linguis redactum. 2 vols. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1979

Harris, Moses: The Aurelian. London, 1766. Reprint Twickenham: Newnes, 1986. (One of the famous butterfly books of the eighteenth century, devoted to British butterflies, with magnificent color plates.)

Hemming, Francis: "The generic names of the butterflies and their type-species". Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History) Entomology (London), Supplement 9, 1967. (A 500 page monograph by the eminent British taxonomist, 1893–1964, published posthumously. At its time the last word on which generic names are valid and which are not, and why.)

Hering, Martin: Die Schmetterlinge. Supplement volume 1 to Paul Brohmer/ P. Ehrmann/G. Ulmer: Die Tierwelt Mitteleuropas. Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer,  1932. (An extensive catalogue of European butterflies, accents added, but no plates.)

Higgins, Lionel G. / Norman D. Riley: A Field Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Europe. London: Collins, 1970, 51983. German: Die Tagfalter Europas und Nordwestafrikas. Hamburg: Parey, 1971, 1978. (Highly praised by Nabokov.)

Hofmann, Ernst: Die Gross-Schmetterlinge Europas. Stuttgart: Hoffmann, 1887, 1894. (One of the "exciting" handbooks on the Lepidoptera fauna of Europe Nabokov grew up with. The first edition has handcolored engravings, the second 71 pages of "chromo" prints. An additional feature is accents and etymologies.)

Hodges, Ronald W. / Tatiana Dominick / Donald R. Davis / Douglas C. Ferguson / John G. Franclemont / Eugene G. Munroe / Jerry A. Powell (eds.): Check List of the Lepidoptera of America North of Mexico. London: Classey, 1983. (Listing all North American butterflies and moths, but a bare list of Lepidoptera names and their authors, without the plentiful taxonomic information the àMiller & Brown checklist supplies for butterflies.)

Holland, W[illiam] J[acob]: The Butterfly Book. 1st edition 1898. Garden City, New York (Doubleday) 1951. (An American standard, republished in many emended editions for half a century. Scientific descriptions are interspersed with poetry; Nabokov found it full of errors, but several times proposed to revise it himself.)

Holland, W[illiam] J[acob]: The Moth Book. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page and Co., 1903, 2nd edition New York: Dover, 1968

Howarth, T.G.: South's British Butterflies. London: Warne, 1973

Howe, William H. (ed. and illustrator): The Butterflies of North America. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975. (Nabokov praised the illustrations.)

Hürter, Hans-Arnold: Die wissenschaftlichen Schmetterlingsnamen: Herleitung und Deutung. Bottrop: Pomp, 1998

Jacobi, Arnold: Mimikry und verwandte Erscheinungen. Braunschweig: Vieweg,  1913

Johnson, Kurt / Steve Coates: Nabokov's Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius. Cambridge, MA: Zoland Books, 1999

Index litteraturae entomologicae – Die Weltliteratur über die gesamte Entomologie bis inklusive 1863, ed. Walther Horn / Sigmund Schenkling, 4 vols. Berlin 1928-1929

Index litteraturae entomologicae – Die Weltliteratur über die gesamte Entomologie von 1864 bis 1900, ed. Walter Derksen / Ursula Scheiding, 5 vols. Berlin 1963–1975

Karges, Joann: Nabokov's Lepidoptera: Genres and Genera. Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis,  1985. (An essay on the butterflies in Nabokov's novels and short stories, with a short checklist at the end.)

Karsholt, Ole / Józef Razowski (ed.): The Lepidoptera of Europe: A Distributional Checklist. Stenstrup, Denmark: Apollo, 1996

Klots, Alexander B.: A Field Guide to the Butterflies of North America, East of the Great Plains. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1951. (Praised by Nabokov.)

Klots, Alexander B.: The World of Butterflies and Moths. New York: McGraw-Hill,  1958, 1976

Koch, Manfred: Schmetterlinge. Radebeul: Neumann, 31991. (A rather hard to use but comprehensive guide to German butterflies.)

Kudrna, Otokar / Alexander Harpke / Kristian Lux / Josef Pennerstorfer / Oliver Schweiger / Josef Settele / Martin Wiemers: Distribution Atlas of Butterflies in Europe. Halle: Gesellschaft für Schmetterlingsschutz, 2011. (An up-to-date distributional atlas for 441 European species and subspecies of butterflies, based on 16 years of survey.)

Laithwaite, Eric / Allan Watson / Paul E. S. Whalley / W. Donald Duckworth: The Dictionary of Butterflies and Moths in colour. London: Michael Joseph, 1975. (Somewhat similar to the books by Lewis and Smart, it has fewer butterfly plates but for non-lepists a rather appealing text, and it includes moths. Out of print for many years.)

Lampert, Kurt: Die Großschmetterlinge und Raupen Mitteleuropas. Esslingen: Schreiber, 1907, 21923. (One of the comprehensive Middle European butterfly atlases from the turn of the century. Nabokov did not like it, but the figures on the average are better than those in Hofmann or Berge, and there are also the caterpillars of many of the species figured.)

Leech, John Henry: Butterflies from China, Japan, and Corea. London: Porter, 1892-1894

Lepidopterum Catalogus, ed. by Olof Christopher Aurivillius, Hans Wagner, Embrik Strand, Werner Adalbert Collier, Felix Bryk, Robert W. Pool. Berlin: Junk,  1911–1939, Leiden (Brill). (This might one day be the most complete and most forbidding catalog of butterflies and moths worldwide, with taxonomic information on all taxa ever described. Over a period of 28 years, 58 fascicles appeared of what were to be 118 volumes. After WW II, a New Series was resumed. If you are looking for something really out of the way, you will be happy if that particular subfamily has been treated in one of the fascicles of the Catalogus.)

Leraut, Patrice J.A.: Liste systématique et synonymique des lépidoptères de France, Belgique et Corse. Paris: Alexanor, 1980, 1997. (A mere systematic checklist of European butterflies and moths with no additional information, but a recent and an all but complete one, provided the species occur in France and Belgium.)

Leraut, Patrice: Les papillons dans leur milieu. Paris (Bordas Écoguides) 1992. (The strength of this volume is in the number of French butterflies and the unusual number of moths – about 1500 – which it lists and figures along with their French common names. The descriptions are most rudimentary, however, and the index is a pain in the neck.)

Lewis, H[ilary] L[eonard]: Butterflies of the World. Chicago, IL: Follett, 1973. German: Das große Buch der Schmetterlinge. Stuttgart: Ulmer, 1973. (No text at all, but many plates with many butterflies – no moths – from all over the world. It takes practice to use it.)

Luquet, Gérard Chr[istian]: "Les écrits lépidopterologiques de Vladimir Nabokov". Alexanor (Paris), 19 (3), 1995 (1996), p. 149–152

Luquet, Gérard-Christian: "Les publications scientifiques de Vladimir Nabokov". Europe – Revue littéraire mensuelle (Paris), 73 (791), Mars 1995, p. 144–151

Mallis, Arnold: American Entomologists. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1971

Mani, M.S.: Butterflies of the Himalaya. Amsterdam: Kluwer, 1986

Manley, W.B.L. / H.G. Allcard: A Field Guide to the Butterflies and Burnets of Spain. Hampton: Classey, 1970

Miller, Lee D. / F. Martin Brown: A Catalogue/Checklist of the Butterflies of America North of Mexico. New Haven, CT: The Lepidopterists' Society, Memoir No. 2, 1981. (A highly useful catalogue brochure listing all the Nearctic butterflies under their current scientific name and the name under which they originally were described, with the synonyms, the publication data of the original descriptions, the place where the holotypes are preserved and a long list of annotations.)

Miller, Jacqueline Y. (ed.): The Common Names of North American Butterflies. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992. (A useful list of all the common names of Nearctic butterflies.)

Novák, Ivo / Frantisek Severa: Der Kosmos-Schmetterlingsführer. Stuttgart: Franckh-Kosmos, 51992. (Originally from Czechoslovakia and translated into most European languages, this is one of the popular and handy current manuals for European Lepidoptera. It has Severa's drawings – no photos – and rudimentary descriptions by Novák. It includes an unusually large share of moths.)

Nye, Ian W.B. e.a.: The Generic Names of Moths of the World, 6 vols. London: British Museum (Natural History), 1975–1991

Opler, Paul A. / George O. Krizek: Butterflies East of the Great Planes. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984

Peña Guzmán, Luis E. / Alfredo J. Ugarte P.: Las Mariposas de Chile. The Butterflies of Chile. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 1996

Pratt, A[ntwerp] E[dgar]: To the Snows of Tibet through China. London: Longmans, Green, 1892, reprint Taipei: Ch'eng Wen, 1971

Preston-Mafham, Rod & Ken: Butterflies of the World. London: Blandford Press,  1988. (A popular introduction to the biology of butterflies, with truly cosmopolitan examples, by a zoologist and a butterfly photographer.)

Procházka, František / Josef Moucha: Die schönsten Tagfalter. Praha: Artia, 1963. By the same authors: Die schönsten Nachtfalter. Praha: Artia, 1966. (Both books have just a limited number of species and tend to prefer the showier exotic ones, far removed from Nabokov's lepidopterological interests, but Procházka's paintings are meticulous.)

Pro Natura Schweizerischer Bund für Naturschutz, Lepidopterologen-Arbeitsgruppe: Schmetterlinge und ihre Lebensräume, Band 1, (Fotorotar) 1994; Schmetterlinge und ihre Lebensräume, Band 2, (Fotorotar) 1997; Schmetterlinge und ihre Lebensräume, Band 3, (Fotorotar) 2000

Pyle, Robert M.: The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Butterflies. New York: Knopf, 1981. (For the last twenty years, this has been the popular manual to the butterflies of North America, by a leading conservationist.)

Sbordoni, Valerio / Saverio Forestiero: Butterflies of the World. New York: Firefly Books, 1998. (One of the five worthwhile contemporary "encyclopedic" works on Lepidoptera for the general public that seem to exist – the others are by Feltwell, Laithwaite, Lewis and Smart –, this one has less plates of species, but much more text, with a methodical treatment of the important taxa and the biology, biogeography, ecology and evolution of butterflies and moths. The Italian version was published by Mondadori, Milano, in 1984.)

Scott, James A.: The Butterflies of North America. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1981, 1986.

Seitz, Adalbert: Die Groß-Schmetterlinge der Erde. 16 volumes. Stuttgart: Lehmann, later volumes: Alfred Kernen, 1906–1954, unfinished. (Though lacking the many butterflies Seitz and his collaborators did not yet know and taxonomically outdated, it is still the most comprehensive catalogue of the world's butterflies and moths and a great rarity. There were simultaneous English and French editions. The volumes 1–4, with one later supplement volume each, deal with the Palearctic fauna, volumes 5–8 with Nearctic and Neotropical butterflies, volumes 9–12 with the Indo-Australian fauna zone, volumes 13–16 with African butterflies and an additional seventeenth volume with the biology of Lepidoptera. For each volume of pure text there is one additional volume of not exactly artistic plates.)

Sepp, Christian / Jan Christiaan Sepp: Butterflies and Moths. Twickenham: Felix Gluck Press, 1978. (A facsimile reprint of the hand colored butterfly engravings by Sepp father and son, most from 1762, with modern explanations.)

Smart, Paul: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Butterfly World. London: Salamander Books, 1975. (Translated into many languages and still in print here and there, this probably is the best popular introduction to butterflies all over the world, with more than 2,000 life size figures, more than in Lewis, and much easier to use. No moths.)

Smith, David Spencer / Lee D. Miller / Jacqueline Y. Miller: The Butterflies of the West Indies and South Florida. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994

Spuler, Arnold: Die Schmetterlinge Europas, 3 vols. (two text, one plates). Stuttgart: Schweizerbart'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1901–1910. The three volumes were followed by a fourth one on caterpillars, Die Raupen der Schmetterlinge Europas, Stuttgart: Schweizerbart'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung,  1910. (Originally intended to be not more than an update of the standard manual by Ernst Hofmann, Spuler's compilation expanded into a work of its own. Though not nearly as large in scope as the monumental work of Seitz, it is a rather comprehensive manual of the European butterflies known at the beginning of this century, quite easy to use. Like Hofmann, Spuler gives the etymology of all the butterfly names and adds accents.)

Staněk, Václav Jan: Encyclopédie des papillons. Paris: Gründ, 1977

Staudinger, O[tto] & H[ans] Rebel: Catalog der Lepidopteren des Palaearctischen Faunengebiets. Berlin: Friedländer, 31901. (An extensive list of the butterflies and moths of all of Eurasia north of the Himalayas, with no plates at all, aimed at collectors and widely consulted in its time, but controversial for taxonomical reasons, that is full of spurious subspecies, races, forms, etc. Nabokov disliked it because of its "haphazard" approach to systematics.)

Suguru, Igarashi / Fukuda Haruo: The Life Histories of Asian Butterflies, vol.1. Tokyo: Tokai University Press, 1997. (This undoubtedly is one of the most splendid works ever published on butterflies. It amply illustrates the life history of some 200 Asian butterflies, from egg through caterpillar and pupa to habitat.)

Taylor, Robert: "Nabokov Exhibition at Harvard shows off his other passion: butterflies". Boston Globe (Boston, Massachusetts), January 29, 1988, p. 73–74

Tilden, James A. / Arthur Clayton Smith: A Field Guide to Western Butterflies. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1986. (The strength of this field guide is less in its figures than in its text which gives more details than popular field guides usually do.)

Tolman, Tom / Richard Lewington: Butterflies of Britain & Europe, Collins Field Guide, London: HarperCollins, 1997. (The successor to the Higgins & Riley field guide, brought up to date and with many East and South European species added.)

Tolman, Tom & Richard Lewington: Guide des Papillons d'Europe et d'Afrique du Nord, traduction et adaptation: Patrice Leraut. Lausanne: Delachaux et Niestlé, 1999

Tuzov, V.K. / P.V. Bogdanov / A.L. Devyatkin / L.V. Kaabak / V.A. Korolev / V.S. Murzin / G.D. Samodurov / E.A. Tarasov: Guide to the Butterflies of Russia and Adjacent Territories, Volume 1: Hesperiidae, Papilionidae, Pieridae, Satyridae. Sofia and Moscow: Pensoft, 1997. (All in English, it has an 80 page outline of the history of Russian lepidopterology and its principal proponents that is free of Bolshevist bias. The authors mention Nabokov: "The atmosphere of that time [of entomological expeditions to Central Asia] was brilliantly described in V.V. Nabokoff's 'The Gift,' where one of the central characters can easily be recognized as his father, V.D. Nabokoff; the famous travellers N.M. Przewalsky and G.E. Grum-Grshimailo are featured there, too" [p. 76]).

Unno, Kazuo: Camouflage and Mimicry of Insects. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1993. (In Japanese.)

Vane-Wright, R[ichard] I. / P[hillip] R. Ackery: The Biology of Butterflies. London: Academic Press, 1984

Vila, Roger / Charles D. Bell / Richard Macniven / Benjamin Goldman-Huertas / Richard H. Ree / Charles R. Marshall / Zsolt Bálint / Kurt Johnson / Dubi Benyamini / Naomi E. Pierce: "Phylogeny and palaeoecology of Polyommatus blue butterflies show Beringia was a climate-regulated gateway to the new world". Proceedings of the Royal Society B,  278, 22 September 2011, p. 2737-2744

Warnecke, Georg: Welcher Schmetterling ist das? Stuttgart: Franckh'sche, 1958 ff. (This is the unpretentious softcover booklet I used when translating Nabokov before I began to work on the present catalog, and it seldom failed me.)

Weed, Clarence M.: The Nature Library: Butterflies. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1925

Wickler, Wolfgang: Mimikry: Nachahmung und Täuschung in der Natur. München: Kindler, 1968. Mimicry in Plants and Animals. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968

Wrobel, Murray: Elsevier's Dictionary of Butterflies and Moths in Latin, English, German, French and Italian. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2000

Zaleski, Philip: "Nabokov's Blue Period". Harvard Magazine (Cambridge, Massachusetts), 88 (6), July-August 1986, p. 34–38

 

 

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