Tag Archives: Brian Boyd

Nabokov Biographer Boyd Delivers Letters to Véra

Nabokov Biographer Boyd Delivers Letters to Véra

University of Auckland Professor and definitive Vladimir Nabokov biographer Brian Boyd this month published Letters to Véra, the first complete volume of the author’s letters to his wife. Edited and…

Needing Fiction Like Water

Needing Fiction Like Water

Brian Boyd, a distinguished professor of English at the University of Auckland, defends fiction in his new book On the Origin of Stories, which offers an overview and defense of Darwinian literary criticism, though…

Third Culturist Boyd nets Nabokov

Third Culturist Boyd nets Nabokov

Brian Boyd-edited Nabokov’s Butterflies, an exploration of Nabokov’s obsession with butterflies that posits Nabokov’s scientific pursuit of lepidoptry as a way of understanding the author more completely, hailed as third  culture exemplar in…

Lolita, Letters and the Language Instinct

Lolita, Letters and the Language Instinct

Influential scientist Steven (The Language Instinct) Pinker names New Zealanders Brian Boyd and Denis Dutton amongst his exemplary practitoners contributing towards a third culture “convergence” of art and science. To Pinker, the Nabakov scholar and founder of…

Nabokov’s Butterflies

Nabokov’s Butterflies

The Brian Boyd (University of Auckland Professor and the world’s leading Nabokov scholar) edited Nabokov’s Butterflies – a collection of Vladimir Nabokov’s writings about butterflies, reviewed by Mark Ridley in The Times Literary Supplement.

Nabokov’s Pale Fire Still Smoulders

Nabokov’s Pale Fire Still Smoulders

38 years later, the mystery continues to intrigue… Auckland University’s Professor Brian Boyd attempts to solve the enigma.