Isabelline (colour) Isabelline (colour) Isabelline , also known as isabella, is a pale grey-yellow, pale fawn, pale cream-brown or parchment colour. It is primarily found in animal coat colouring, particularly plumage colour in birds and, in Europe, in horses. It also has historically been applied to fashion. The first known record of the word was in 1600 as "isabella colour"; this use later became interchangeable in literature with "isabelline" after the latter was introduced into print in 1859. The origin of the word is unclear; the uncertainty prompted by this has generated several attempts to provide an etymology and led to one
Pale Fire see Charles Kinbote as an alter-ego of the insane Professor V. Botkin, to whose delusions John Shade and the rest of the faculty of Wordsmith College generally condescend. Nabokov himself endorsed this reading, stating in an interview in 1962 (the novel's year of publication) that "Pale Fire" "is full of plums that I keep hoping somebody will find. For instance, the nasty commentator is not an ex-King of Zembla nor is he professor Kinbote. He is professor Botkin, or Botkine, a Russian and a madman." The novel's intricate structure of teasing cross-references leads readers to this "plum". The Index, supposedly