[EDNote: On this topic, one intriguing source is a comment in VN's "The Tragedy of Tragedy," written in 1941 and included in The Man from the USSR and Other Plays. Discussing annotations to modern editions of Greek tragedy, he wrote, "Indeed the main drama seems to take place in these minute & copious footnotes" (328). There is a thread connecting this theme of annotations and marginalia back to Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, through the projected thoughts of dying Alexander Chernyshevski in The Gift, and extending through many of VN's later works. -SB]

Original Message --------

Subject:	Re: [NABOKV-L] Query: VN and Pale Fire, Martin Gardner and Annotated Alice
Date:	Mon, 08 Jan 2007 09:36:02 -0500
From:	John A Rea <j.rea2@insightbb.com>
Reply-To:	j.rea2@insightbb.com
To:	Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
References:	<459D316B02000012002D1889@dudley.holycross.edu>

NABOKV-L wrote:
> Martin Gardner has published other "annotated" books. There is the
> series
> about "The Annotated Innocence of Father Brown" and another Chesterton (
> "The Man who was Thursday"), for example.
> Susan Elizabeth Sweeney added an EDNOTE where she points out that "the
> VN -
> MG connection is worth exploring further, although there were certainly
> more
> immediate and fundamental influences for VN's thinking about annotating
> works of literature, including his own commentary on Pushkin's Eugene
> Onegin."
>
> There were also much older "annotated books", unfortunately I cannot
> remember any of them to list here with certainty. There are, of course,
> extensive foot-notes for Shakespeare, etc and even Samuel Johnson's own
> encyclopedic (indirect)commentaries may count.

We might even include Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner" as originally
printed with copious marginal "annotations": based, of course on
the early travel books he had read. (E. A. Lowe's _Road to Xanadu_
etc could serve as a model for more recent books dealing the
relations of an authors reading to his own output (noting booksd
like _Books at the Wake_)
John A Rea

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