Vladimir Nabokov
Who was Vladimir Nabokov?
Russian-American author of "Lolita" and "Pale Fire," considered one of the greatest prose stylists in English literature and a noted lepidopterist.
Biographical data adapted from Wikipedia’s article on Vladimir Nabokov (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Biography
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was born on April 22, 1899, in Saint Petersburg, Imperial Russia, into an aristocratic and politically active family. His father, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, was a liberal jurist and statesman, and their wealth let young Vladimir grow up speaking Russian, English, and French. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 forced the Nabokovs to leave Russia, and after spending some time in Crimea, they moved to Western Europe. Nabokov studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, University of Cambridge, graduating in 1922, the same year his father was killed in Berlin by a monarchist during a political lecture.
After his studies, Nabokov settled in Berlin, where he spent most of the 1920s and 1930s writing in Russian under the pen name Vladimir Sirin. During this time, he met and married Véra Slonim in 1925; she became his lifelong partner, editor, and collaborator. His early Russian-language novels, including "The Defense" (1930), marked him as an important voice in the Russian émigré literary community. As the Nazis rose to power in Germany, the family, now with a young son named Dmitri, fled to France in 1937 and then to the United States in 1940.
In America, Nabokov became an English-language writer and academic. He lectured at Wellesley College and later was a professor of Russian literature at Cornell University from 1948 to 1959, where his detailed and engaging lectures on European fiction became famous among students. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1943, which supported his creative and scholarly work. His memoir "Speak, Memory," published in 1951, was praised for its vivid portrayal of his Russian childhood and years in exile. The 1955 publication of "Lolita," first released by a Parisian press after several American publishers turned it down, brought Nabokov international fame and financial freedom, allowing him to leave his academic job.
Nabokov and Véra moved to Montreux, Switzerland, in 1961, where he lived for the rest of his life at the Palace Hotel. There he wrote "Pale Fire" (1962), a daring novel structured as a poem with detailed scholarly notes, which further secured his place as one of the most innovative writers of the twentieth century. His translation and commentary of Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin," published in four volumes in 1964, showed his literary scholarship, though its very literal approach sparked strong debate from critics including Edmund Wilson. Nabokov died in Montreux on July 2, 1977.
Before Fame
Nabokov grew up in incredible luxury in pre-revolutionary Saint Petersburg, with a private library of thousands of books and tutors who made sure he was fluent in several European languages before his teenage years. He wrote his first poem at age fifteen, and his early literary goals were clear before the disruptions of revolution and exile changed his life's path for good.
His time in Berlin, writing in Russian for a dispersed émigré audience with little hope of widespread recognition, was still creatively fruitful. Novels like The Defense and Invitation to a Beheading gained a loyal, though small, following and honed the complex writing techniques he later used in English. It was moving to America and the necessity of writing in his second language that eventually gave him a global audience.
Key Achievements
- Authored Lolita (1955), ranked fourth on Modern Library's list of the 100 best twentieth-century novels
- Published Pale Fire (1962), widely regarded as one of the most formally inventive novels in the English language
- Produced the memoir Speak, Memory (1951), ranked among the greatest nonfiction works of the twentieth century by Random House
- Received the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1943 and was a seven-time finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction
- Made original contributions to lepidopterology, including the taxonomic study of the Polyommatus blue butterfly group at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology
Did You Know?
- 01.Nabokov was an accomplished lepidopterist who discovered several butterfly species; one, Nabokov's blue (Polyommatus subsolanus), was named in his honor, and his scientific hypothesis about the migration of Polyommatus blues from Asia to the Americas was confirmed by researchers decades after his death.
- 02.He composed chess problems as a serious artistic pursuit, valuing them for their aesthetic complexity rather than their difficulty, and included discussions of chess composition in his memoir Speak, Memory.
- 03.Nabokov wrote his novels and lectures on index cards, often while standing at a lectern he had constructed for the purpose, keeping thousands of cards organized in a filing system he maintained meticulously.
- 04.His Cornell lecture notes were posthumously published as Lectures on Literature and Lectures on Russian Literature, and his close readings of authors such as Kafka, Flaubert, and Tolstoy became influential works of literary criticism in their own right.
- 05.Lolita was rejected by four American publishers before being accepted by the Olympia Press in Paris in 1955, a publisher known primarily for erotic fiction; its subsequent bestseller status in the United States transformed Nabokov from a respected literary figure into a wealthy celebrity author.
Family & Personal Life
Awards & Honors
| Award | Year | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Guggenheim Fellowship | 1943 | — |