Pale Fire created by Kinbote, features an entry for a "Botkin, V.," describing this Botkin as an "American scholar of Russian descent"—and referring to a note in the Commentary on line 894 of Shade's poem, in which no such person is directly mentioned but a character suggests that "Kinbote" is "a kind of anagram of Botkin or Botkine". In this interpretation, "Gradus" the murderer is an American named Jack Grey who wanted to kill Judge Goldsworth, whose house "Pale Fire's" commentator—whatever his "true" name is—is renting. Goldsworth had condemned Grey to an asylum from which he escaped shortly before mistakenly killing Shade,
Gainsboro, Roanoke, Virginia Major Kemp Gaines, who both founded and provided the early financing for the village. The location of the settlement would shift slightly to the southwest after 1852 following the arrival of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad and the establishment of Big Lick. Referred to as "Old Lick" between the 1850s and 1880s, what would become present-day Gainsboro began to develop as a predominantly African-American community. In 1882, Old Lick and Big Lick would incorporate as Roanoke, and most of its development which still stands today occurred between 1890 and 1940. It was during this time that the area would develop