On One of the Biographical Sources of Pale Fire

Abstract

The paper focuses on one of the possible biographical sources of Pale Fire. The link between biographical details of some of the members of the well-known Botkin family of Russia and the novel's Botkin/Kinbote is studied. Two of the Botkin family members, like the Botkin of Pale Fire, were creators of a fictitious story of a royal who had supposedly escaped death during the Revolution and became an exile, and one of them wrote a book about it. One of these Botkins was known to Nabokov personally in his Berlin years.