Literature is not only about aesthetics, but also almost equally about economics. The successful marketing of an author and his literary works is more dependent on the activities of cultural merchants than on the particular words and phrases found in the author's prose. Marketing Literature and Posthumous Legacies focuses on the creation of symbolic capital for the literary legacies of Leonid Andreev and Vladimir Nabokov that was eventually exchanged by cultural merchants for financial and ideological profit. Yuri Leving and Frederick H. White discuss the ways in which certain cultural merchants created symbolic meaning for these two authors through a process of collusion, consecration, and the marketing of tangible and intangible products that lead to some sort of transaction. The promotion and maintenance of posthumous legacies involves an intricate network of personal interests that drive the preservation of literary reputations.

AcknowledgmentsIntroductionPART I: THE ANDREEVSChapter 1: The Early Visual Marketing of Leonid AndreevChapter 2: Marketing Strategies: Vadim Andreev in Dialogue with the Soviet UnionChapter 3: The Role of the Scholar in the Consecration of Leonid Andreev (1950s to present)Chapter 4: Creating Posthumous Legacies: The Power to Consecrate and to Blaspheme. Vadim Andreev's Memories of ChildhoodChapter 5: Market Pressures: Vadim Andreev's Incomplete Memoiristic JourneyPART II: THE NABOKOVSChapter 6: Nabokov and the Publishing BusinessChapter 7: Plaster, Marble, Canon: The Vindication of Nabokov in Post-Soviet RussiaChapter 8: The Visual Marketing of Nabokov: Who is the Face of the Russian Lolita?Chapter 9: "Nabokov-7": Russian Postmodernism in Search of a National IdentityChapter 10: Interpreting Voids: Nabokov's Last Incomplete Novel, The Original of LauraConclusionBibliographyAbout the Authors