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A   Nabokov  Influence

Reid, Captain Mayne. The Headless Horseman: A Strange Tale of Texas.

London: Richard Bentley, 1866.

First one-volume edition. iv, 470 pages, plus 19 engravings (as per Sabin 69049).

A novel of Texas written by an Irishman who spent a little more than a decade in the United States, including several years fighting in the Mexican American war as part of the New York volunteer infantry. He most likely heard the South Texas folktale of the headless horseman during his service in the state. He returned to Ireland in 1850 and started writing adventure stories based on his experiences in the U.S., "The Headless Horseman" being one of his most popular books.

Surprisingly, Reid's works were even more popular in Russia than in the British isles or America. In his memoir, Speak, Memory, Vladimir  Nabokov  devotes most of the tenth chapter to Reid's tales and of their early influence on him: "The Wild  West fiction of Captain Mayne Reid, translated and simplified, was tremendously popular with Russian children at the beginning of this century, long after his American fame had faded. Knowing English, I could savor his Headless Horseman in the unabridged original. Two friends swap clothes, hats, mounts, and the wrong many gets murdered—this is the main whorl of the intricate plot...In the summer of 1909 or 1910, [a friend] enthusiastically initiated me into the dramatic possibilities of the Mayne Reid books. He had read them in Russian...and, when looking for a playable plot, was prone to combine them with Fenimore Cooper and his own fiery inventions. I viewed our games with greater detachment and tried to keep to the script."

One scholar even attributes the title of Lolita to a Mayne Reid book, either The War Trail or The Lone Ranche, both of which employ Lolita as the name of a horse (See James T.  Bratcher , "Lolita: A Probable Source of  Nabokov's  Name for His Temptress" in Notes & Queries, September 2009).

Nobel Prize-winning poet Czeslaw Milosz also cites Reid as an early influence: "There weren't many photographs in my childhood, and my imaginings about foreign countries were fed by a drawing or a woodcut—for example, the illustrations to Jules Verne's and Mayne Reid's books" (see the essay "After All").

The Headless Horseman was filmed in 1974 in Russian as "Vsadnik bez golovy," directed by Vladimir Vajnshtok with a script by Pavel Finn.

Rebacked with the original covers (with a headless horseman stamped in gold) and spine laid down. Spine cocked and bottom edges worn, and some of the engravings are trimmed close on the outer edge.

(#S979)

$150.00

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