The Real Lolita

Footnotes

1

In the original Russian, Albinus was called Bruno Kretchmar, while Margot’s name was Magda.

2

I am withholding their last names to protect the privacy of their families, and because of the difficulty in locating descendants to verify the details.

3

Not their real names.

4

Nabokov settled upon the “Lolita” sobriquet for his heroine very late in the writing process. Before then her name was “Juanita Dark”—a sly, Spanishized reworking of Jeanne d’Arc, or Saint Joan.

5

Oddly, Welding referred to the girl as “Florence ‘Sally’ Ann Horner.” It is a mystery why he gave her a middle name that was never reported and did not exist. The error continued to propagate, also cited by Alfred Appel, Jr., in The Annotated Lolita.