The acclaimed author of Lolita offers unique insight into works by James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Jane Austen, and others?with an introduction by John Updike.In the 1940s, when Vladimir Nabokov first embarked on his academic career in the United States, he brought with him hundreds of original lectures on the authors he most admired. For two decades those lectures served as the basis for Nabokov's teaching, first at Wellesley and then at Cornell, as he introduced undergraduates to the delights of great fiction.This volume collects Nabokov's famous lectures on Western European literature, with analysis and commentary on Charles Dickens's Bleak House, Gustav Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Marcel Proust's The Walk by Swann's Place, Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," and other works. Edited and with a Foreword by Fredson Bowers. Editor's Foreword vii Fredson Bowers Introduction xvii John Updike Good Readers and Good Writers 1(8) Mansfield Park 9(54) Jane Austen Bleak House 63(62) Charles Dickens Madame Bovary 125(54) Gustave Flaubert ``The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'' 179(28) Robert Louis Stevenson The Walk by Swann's Place 207(44) Marcel Proust ``The Metamorphosis'' 251(34) Franz Kafka Ulysses 285(86) James Joyce The Art of Literature and Commonsense 371(10) L'Envoi 381(2) Appendix 383