The couple knew firsthand of Edmund Wilson’s travails with “Memoirs of Hecate County,” a story collection that was withdrawn from sale and prosecuted for obscenity, in 1946. Wilson’s case had made its way to the Supreme Court, which upheld the ban.

In a letter to the Times Book Review in November, 1971, Nabokov wrote, “I am aware that my former friend is in poor health but in the struggle between the dictates of compassion and those of personal honor the latter wins.”