Brian Boyd is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and one of the leading international specialists of Nabokov, notably known for his authoritative 2-volume critical biography of the author, which he wrote after Véra Nabokov asked him to organize the Nabokov archive. He wrote two books, hundreds of articles/ chapters/ forewords/ afterwords/ reviews on Nabokov, and edited or co-edited not only his works of fiction, but also his correspondence with Véra, his verse translations, and his lepidopterological writings. In 2004 he launched AdaOnline, a hyperlinked version of his Ada annotations. Besides Nabokov, he works on literature from Homer to the present, from epics to comics, including two books on Shakespeare (Words That Count, 2004, Why Lyrics Last, 2012), and books on literature and evolution (especially On the Origin of Stories, 2009) and on art and evolution (On the Origin of Art, exhibition and book, 2016).

 

Publications in French:

  • Vladimir Nabokov : les années russes, trad. P. Delamare, Paris : Gallimard, 1992.
  • Vladimir Nabokov : les années américaines, trad. P. Delamare, Paris : Gallimard, 1999.
  • Co-traduction et co-édition avec Olga Voronina, Lettres à Véra. Paris: Fayard, 2017.
  • “Chronologie.” In Vladimir Nabokov, Œuvres romanesques complètes (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade), vol. I. Ed. Maurice Couturier et al. Paris: Gallimard, 1999. Pp. li-lxxii.
  • Interview with Georges Nivat. “Nabokov vivant: un entretien avec Brian Boyd.” Le Magazine littéraire, September 1999, 26-27.
  • “Chronologie.” In Vladimir Nabokov, Œuvres romanesques complètes (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade), vol. II. Ed. Maurice Couturier et al. Paris: Gallimard, 2010, xxiii-xliii. ISBN 978-2072417108.
  • “Autres Rivages.” Notice and Notes. In Vladimir Nabokov, Œuvres romanesques complètes (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade), vol. II. Ed. Maurice Couturier et al. Paris: Gallimard, 2010, 1726-47.
  • “Du doute au délice.” La Revue de Deux Mondes, July-August 2010, 115-26.

 

Selected Bibliography in English:

  • Nabokov’s Ada: The Place of Consciousness (2nd). Christchurch, NZ: Cybereditions. 2001.
  • Nabokov’s Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.
  • Nabokov’s Butterflies: Unpublished and Uncollected Writings. Edited by Brian Boyd and Robert Michael Pyle, 2000.
  • Verses and Versions: Three Centuries of Russian Poetry Selected and Translated by Vladimir Nabokov. Edited by Brian Boyd and Stanislav Shvabrin. New York: Harcourt, 2008.
  • Co-editor, with Marijeta Bozovic, Nabokov Upside Down. Northwestern University Press, 2017.
  • « Préface; The Haunted Enchanter. » In Vladimir Nabokov et la France, ed. Yannicke Chupin, Lara Delage-Toriel, Agnès Edel-Roy and Monica Manolescu (Strasbourg: Presses de l’Université de Strasbourg, 2017), 9-15.
  • Co-editor, with Anastasia Tolstoy, Vladimir Nabokov, Think, Write, Speak. New York: Knopf, and London: Penguin, 2019 (in press).
  • Boyd, B.. Stalking Nabokov: Selected Essays. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.