View source for Vladimir Nabokov

{{Short description|Russian and American novelist (1899–1977)}}
{{Redirect|Nabokov|his father, the politician|Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov|other persons with the name|Nabokov (surname)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2022}}
{{Use American English|date=July 2022}}
{{Infobox writer
| name             = Vladimir Nabokov
| native_name      = Владимир Набоков
| native_name_lang = ru
| image            = Vladimir Nabokov 1973.jpg
| caption          = Nabokov in [[Montreux]], Switzerland, 1973
| pseudonym        = Vladimir Sirin
| birth_date       = {{Birth date|df=yes|1899|4|22}}
| birth_place      = [[Saint Petersburg]], [[Russian Empire]]
| death_date       = {{death date and age|df=yes|1977|7|2|1899|4|10}}
| death_place      = [[Montreux]], Switzerland
| education        = [[Trinity College, Cambridge]]
| employer         = {{ubl|[[Wellesley College]]|[[Cornell University]]|[[Harvard University]]}}
| occupation       = {{cslist|Novelist|poet|[[literary critic]]|[[lepidoptery|entomologist]]|professor}}
| language         = {{hlist|Russian|English|French}}
| citizenship      = {{ubl|Russia (until 1922)<ref>{{Cite web |last=Pitzer |first=Andrea |date=1 February 2013 |title=Vladimir Nabokov's immigration file |url=http://nabokovsecrethistory.com/news/vladimir-nabokov-immigration-file/ |access-date=6 June 2025 |website=The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov |archive-date=20 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240920104925/http://nabokovsecrethistory.com/news/vladimir-nabokov-immigration-file/ |url-status=live }}</ref>|United States}}
| period           = [[Contemporary literature|Contemporary]] ([[20th century in literature|20th century]])
| genres           = {{hlist|[[Novel]]|[[novella]]|[[short story]]|[[play (theatre)|play]]|poetry|translation|[[autobiography]]|[[non-fiction]]}}
| movement         = {{hlist|[[Modernist literature|Modernism]]|[[Postmodern literature|postmodernism]]|<!-- [[Impressionism (literature)|impressionism]]{{citation needed|date=March 2023}} -->}}
| years_active     = from 1916
| notableworks     = {{ubl|''[[The Defense]]'' (1930)|''[[Despair (novel)|Despair]]'' (1934)|''[[Invitation to a Beheading]]'' (1936)|''[[The Gift (Nabokov novel)|The Gift]]'' (1938)|''[[The Enchanter]]'' (1939)|"[[Signs and Symbols]]" (1948)|''[[Lolita]]'' (1955)|''[[Pnin (novel)|Pnin]]'' (1957)|''[[Pale Fire]]'' (1962)|''[[Speak, Memory]]'' (1936–1966)|''[[Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle|Ada or Ardor]]'' (1969)}}
| spouse           = {{marriage|[[Véra Nabokov]]|1925}}
| children         = [[Dmitri Nabokov]]
| awards           = 
| signature        = Vladimir Nabokov signature.svg
| website          = {{URL|vladimir-nabokov.org}}
| portaldisp       = yes
}}

'''Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov'''{{Family name footnote|Vladimirovich|Nabokov|lang=Eastern Slavic}}{{efn|{{IPAc-en|UKlang|ˈ|n|æ|b|ə|k|ɒ|f|,_|n|ə|ˈ|b|oʊ|k|ɒ|f|,_|-|ˈ|b|ɒ|k|-}} {{respell|NAB|ə|kof|,_|nə|BO(H)K|of}}, {{IPAc-en|USlang|ˈ|n|ɑː|b|ə|k|ɔː|f|,_|ˈ|n|æ|b|-|,_|n|ə|ˈ|b|ɔː|k|ə|f}} {{respell|NA(H)B|ə|KAWF|,_|nə|BAW|kəf}}.<ref>{{Cite American Heritage Dictionary|Nabokov|access-date=9 September 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/nabokov|title=Nabokov|work=[[Collins English Dictionary]]|publisher=[[HarperCollins]]|access-date=9 September 2019}}</ref><ref>{{Cite encyclopedia |url=http://www.lexico.com/definition/Nabokov,+Vladimir |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220826080617/https://www.dictionary.com/ |url-status=dead |archive-date=26 August 2022 |title=Nabokov, Vladimir |dictionary=[[Lexico]] UK English Dictionary |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]}}</ref><ref>{{Cite Merriam-Webster|Nabokov|access-date=9 September 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/vladimir-nabokov|title=Nabokov, Vladimir|work=[[Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English]]|publisher=[[Longman]]|access-date=9 September 2019}}</ref>}} ({{langx|ru|link=no|Владимир Владимирович Набоков}} {{IPA|ru|vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvʲɪtɕ nɐˈbokəf||Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov.ru.vorb.oga}}; {{OldStyleDate|22 April|1899|10 April}}{{efn|name=note1}}{{snd}}2 July 1977), also known by the [[pen name]] '''Vladimir Sirin''' ({{lang|ru|Владимир Сирин}}), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and [[entomologist]]. Born in [[Imperial Russia]] in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian (1926–1938) while living in Berlin, where he met his wife, [[Véra Nabokov]]. He achieved international acclaim and prominence after moving to the United States, where he began writing in English. Trilingual in Russian, English, and French, Nabokov became a U.S. citizen in 1945 and lived mostly on the East Coast before returning to Europe in 1961, where he settled in [[Montreux]], Switzerland.

From 1948 to 1959, Nabokov was a professor of Russian literature at [[Cornell University]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=The 50th Anniversary of Nabokov's Lolita |url=https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/lolita/cornell/index.html |access-date=19 September 2022 |website=rmc.library.cornell.edu}}</ref> His 1955 novel ''[[Lolita]]'' ranked fourth on [[Modern Library]]'s list of the [[Modern Library 100 Best Novels|100 best 20th-century novels]] in 1998 and is considered one of the greatest works of 20th-century literature.<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html |title=100 Best Novels |publisher=[[Modern Library]] |website= randomhouse.com |year=1998 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220318062309/https://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/ |archive-date=18 March 2022 |access-date=12 February 2009}}</ref> Nabokov's ''[[Pale Fire]]'', published in 1962, ranked 53rd on the same list. His memoir, ''[[Speak, Memory]]'', published in 1951, is considered among the greatest nonfiction works of the 20th century, placing eighth on [[Random House]]'s ranking of 20th-century works.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnonfiction.html |title=100 Best Nonfiction |publisher= Modern Library| website= randomhouse.com |year=2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220319205859/https://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-nonfiction/ |archive-date=19 March 2022 |access-date=12 February 2009}}</ref> Nabokov was a seven-time finalist for the [[National Book Award for Fiction]]. He also was an expert [[Lepidopterology|lepidopterist]] and [[chess composer|composer of chess problems]]. [[Time (magazine)|''Time'']] magazine wrote that Nabokov had "evolved a vivid English style which combines Joycean word play with a Proustian evocation of mood and setting".<ref>{{cite news| title=Books: Pnin & Pan| date=March 18, 1957| work=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] | url=https://time.com/archive/6611566/books-pnin-pan/}}</ref>

==Early life and education==
===Russia===
[[File:Nabokovs_arms.png|thumb|200px|left|Coat of Arms of the Nabokov family, members of an ancient [[Russian nobility]], granted to them on 1 January 1798 by [[Paul I of Russia|Emperor Paul I]]]]
[[File:Dmitry N. Nabokov.jpeg|thumb|upright=1|Nabokov's grandfather Dmitry Nabokov, who was Justice Minister under [[Alexander II of Russia|Tsar Alexander II]]]]
[[Image:Nabokov1914.jpg|thumb|upright=1|Nabokov's father, [[Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov|V. D. Nabokov]], in his [[World War I]] officer's uniform, 1914]]
[[File:Maison Nabokov.JPG|thumb|upright=1|The Nabokov family mansion in [[Saint Petersburg]]; today it is the site of the [[Nabokov House|Nabokov museum]].]]
[[File:Rozhdestveno.JPG|thumb|upright=1|At age 16, Nabokov inherited the [[Rozhdestveno Memorial Estate|Rozhdestveno estate]] from his maternal uncle; Nabokov owned it for one year before losing it in the [[October Revolution]].]]

Nabokov was born on 22 April 1899 (10 April 1899 [[Adoption of the Gregorian calendar#Adoption in Eastern Europe|Old Style]]) in [[Saint Petersburg]]{{efn|name=note1}} to a wealthy and prominent family of the [[Russian nobility]]. His family traced its roots to the 14th-century [[Tatar people|Tatar]] prince Nabok [[Morza|Murza]], who entered into the service of the Tsars, and from whom the family name is derived.<ref>{{cite book| first= Vladimir Vladimirovich |last= Nabokov| title= Speak, Memory: A Memoir| publisher= Gollancz |year= 1951| page= 37}}</ref><ref name= RussianYears />{{rp|16}}<ref>{{Cite book |first=Barbara |last=Wyllie |year=2010 |title=Vladimir Nabokov |url=https://archive.org/details/vladimirnabokov00barb |location=London |publisher=Reaktion Books |page=[https://archive.org/details/vladimirnabokov00barb/page/n8 7] |isbn=9781861896605 |oclc=671654363}}</ref> His father was [[Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov]], a liberal lawyer, statesman, and journalist, and his mother was the heiress Yelena Ivanovna ''née'' Rukavishnikova, the granddaughter of a millionaire gold-mine owner. His father was a leader of the pre-Revolutionary liberal [[Constitutional Democratic Party]], and wrote numerous books and articles about criminal law and politics.<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia|url=http://www.britannica.com/biography/Vladimir-Nabokov|title=Vladimir Nabokov {{!}} American author|encyclopedia=[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]|access-date=3 May 2016|archive-date=8 May 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160508065144/http://www.britannica.com/biography/Vladimir-Nabokov|url-status=live}}</ref> His cousins included the composer [[Nicolas Nabokov]]. His paternal grandfather, Dmitry Nabokov, was Russia's Justice Minister during the reign of [[Alexander II of Russia|Alexander II]]. His paternal grandmother was the [[Baltic Germans|Baltic German]] Baroness Maria von Korff. Through his father, he was a descendant of the composer [[Carl Heinrich Graun]].<ref>{{cite book| first= Vincent |last= Giroud| title= Nicolas Nabokov: A Life in Freedom and Music| publisher= Oxford University Press |year= 2015| page= 2}}</ref>

Vladimir was the family's eldest and favorite child. He had four younger siblings: [[Sergey Nabokov|Sergey]], Olga, Elena, and Kirill. Sergey was killed in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945 after publicly denouncing Hitler's regime. Writer [[Ayn Rand]] recalled Olga (her close friend at Stoiunina Gymnasium) as a supporter of constitutional monarchy who first awakened Rand's interest in politics.<ref>{{Citation | last = Sciabarra | first = Chris Matthew | title = Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical | publisher = Penn State Press | year = 2013 | pages = 66, 367–68}}.</ref><ref>{{Citation | last = Gladstein | first = Mimi Reisel | year = 2009 | title = Ayn Rand | series = Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers | place = New York | publisher = Continuum | isbn = 978-0-8264-4513-1 | page = 2}}.</ref> Elena, who in later years became Vladimir's favorite sibling, published her correspondence with him in 1985. She was an important source for Nabokov's biographers.

Nabokov spent his childhood and youth in Saint Petersburg and at the country estate Vyra near [[Siverskaya]], south of the city. His childhood, which he called "perfect" and "cosmopolitan", was remarkable in several ways. The family spoke Russian, English, and French in their household, and Nabokov was trilingual from an early age. He related that the first English book his mother read to him was ''Misunderstood'', by [[Florence Montgomery]]. Much to his patriotic father's disappointment, Nabokov could read and write in English before he could in Russian. In his memoir ''[[Speak, Memory]]'',<ref>{{cite news |last1=Beam |first1=Alex |title=Confessions of a word snob |work=International Herald Tribune |date=29 April 2013 |  via=Cengage  | id={{Gale|A327843688}}}}</ref> Nabokov recalls numerous details of his privileged childhood. His ability to recall his past in vivid detail was a boon to him during his permanent exile, providing a theme that runs from his first book, ''[[Mary (novel)|Mary]]'', to later works such as ''[[Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle]]''. While the family was nominally [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Orthodox]], it had little religious fervor. Vladimir was not forced to attend church after he lost interest.

In 1916, Nabokov inherited the estate [[Rozhdestveno Memorial Estate|Rozhdestveno]], next to Vyra, from his uncle Vasily Ivanovich Rukavishnikov ("Uncle Ruka" in ''[[Speak, Memory]]''). He lost it in the [[October Revolution]] one year later; this was the only house he ever owned.{{citation needed|date=November 2013}}

Nabokov's adolescence was the period in which he made his first serious literary endeavors. In 1916, he published his first book, ''Stikhi'' (''Poems''), a collection of 68 Russian poems. At the time he was attending Tenishev school in Saint Petersburg, where his literature teacher Vladimir Vasilievich Gippius had criticized his literary accomplishments. Some time after the publication of ''Stikhi'', [[Zinaida Gippius]], renowned poet and first cousin of his teacher, told Nabokov's father at a social event, "Please tell your son that he will never be a writer."<ref>{{cite journal| url= http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/?id=1453| journal= Cycnos| title= Nabokov and Some Poets of Russian Modernism| date= 25 June 2008| volume= NABOKOV : At the Crossroads of Modernism and Postmodernism -| access-date= 5 December 2015| last1= Karlinsky| first1= Simon| archive-date= 8 December 2015| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20151208101339/http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/?id=1453| url-status= dead}}</ref>

After the 1917 [[February Revolution]], Nabokov's father became a secretary of the [[Russian Provisional Government]] in Saint Petersburg.

===October Revolution===
After the [[October Revolution]], the family fled the city for Crimea, at first not expecting to be away for very long. They lived at a friend's estate and in September 1918 moved to [[Livadiya, Crimea|Livadiya]], at the time under the separatist [[Crimean Regional Government]], in which Nabokov's father became a minister of justice.

===University of Cambridge===
After the withdrawal of the [[German Army (German Empire)|German Army]] in November 1918 and the defeat of the [[White Army]] in early 1919, the Nabokovs sought exile in western Europe, along with other Russian refugees. They settled briefly in England, where Nabokov gained admittance to the [[University of Cambridge]], where he attended [[Trinity College, Cambridge|Trinity College]] and studied [[zoology]] and later [[Slavic languages|Slavic]] and [[Romance languages]]. His examination results on the first part of the [[Tripos]] exam, taken at the end of his second year, were a [[starred first]]. He took the second part of the exam in his fourth year just after his father's death, and feared he might fail it. But his exam was marked [[Second class honours|second-class]]. His final examination result also ranked second-class, and his [[Bachelor of Arts|BA]] was conferred in 1922. Nabokov later drew on his Cambridge experiences to write several works, including the novels ''[[Glory (Nabokov novel)|Glory]]'' and ''[[The Real Life of Sebastian Knight]]''.

At Cambridge, one journalist wrote in 2014, "the coats-of-arms on the windows of his room protected him from the cold and from the melancholy over the recent loss of his country. It was in this city, in his moments of solitude, accompanied by ''King Lear'', ''Le Morte d'Arthur'', ''The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'' or ''Ulysses'', that Nabokov made the firm decision to become a Russian writer."<ref>[https://www.rbth.com/arts/literature/2014/04/22/the-secret-british-life-of-vladimir-nabokov_721698 "The secret British life of Vladimir Nabokov"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221007053745/https://www.rbth.com/arts/literature/2014/04/22/the-secret-british-life-of-vladimir-nabokov_721698 |date=7 October 2022 }}, ''Russia Beyond'', 22 April 2014.</ref>

==Career==
===Berlin (1922–1937)===
In 1920, Nabokov's family moved to Berlin, where his father set up the émigré newspaper ''Rul''' ("Rudder"). Nabokov joined them in Berlin two years later, after completing his studies at Cambridge.

In March 1922, Russian monarchists [[Pyotr Shabelsky-Bork]] and [[Sergey Taboritsky]] shot and killed Nabokov's father in Berlin as he was shielding their target, [[Pavel Milyukov]], a leader of the [[Constitutional Democratic Party]]-in-exile. Shortly after his father's death, Nabokov's mother and sister moved to Prague. Nabokov drew upon his father's death repeatedly in his fiction. On one interpretation of his novel ''[[Pale Fire]]'', an assassin kills the poet John Shade when his target is a fugitive European monarch.

Nabokov stayed in Berlin, where he had become a recognised poet and writer in Russian within the émigré community; he published under the ''nom de plume'' V. Sirin (a reference to the [[sirin|fabulous bird]] of Russian folklore). To supplement his scant writing income, he taught languages and gave tennis and boxing lessons.<ref name="MA"/> Dieter E. Zimmer has written of Nabokov's 15 Berlin years, "he never became fond of Berlin, and at the end intensely disliked it. He lived within the lively Russian community of Berlin that was more or less self-sufficient, staying on after it had disintegrated because he had nowhere else to go to. He knew little German. He knew few Germans except for landladies, shopkeepers, and immigration officials at the police headquarters."<ref>{{cite web | last = Zimmer | first = Dieter E | url = http://www.d-e-zimmer.de/Root/nabberlin2002.htm | title = Presentation of the book ''Nabokov's Berlin'' | series = The International Vladimir Nabokov Symposium | publisher = St. Petersburg | date = 15 July 2002 | access-date = 20 December 2009 | archive-date = 16 February 2020 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20200216210859/http://www.d-e-zimmer.de/Root/nabberlin2002.htm | url-status = live }}.</ref>

====Marriage====
In 1922, Nabokov became engaged to Svetlana Siewert, but she broke the engagement off early in 1923 when her parents worried whether he could provide for her.<ref>{{cite news | url= https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/schiff-vera.html | work= The New York Times | title= Vera, chapter 1, para 6 | first= Stacy | last= Schiff | archive-date= 20 January 2017 | access-date= 20 February 2017 | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20170120234836/http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/schiff-vera.html | url-status= live }}</ref> In May 1923, he met [[Véra Evseyevna Slonim]], a Russian-Jewish woman,<!-- do not put ethnicity first --> at a charity ball in Berlin.<ref name= "MA">{{Citation | author-link = Martin Amis| last = Amis | first = Martin | title = Visiting Mrs Nabokov: And Other Excursions | pages = 115–18 | publisher = [[Penguin Books]] | orig-year = 1993 | edition = reprint | year = 1994 | isbn = 978-0-14-023858-7| title-link = Visiting Mrs Nabokov: And Other Excursions }}.</ref> They married in April 1925.<ref name="MA"/> Their only child, [[Dmitri Nabokov|Dmitri]], was born in 1934.

In the course of 1936, Véra lost her job because of the increasingly antisemitic environment; [[Sergey Taboritsky]] was appointed deputy head of Germany's Russian-émigré bureau; and Nabokov began seeking a job in the English-speaking world.

===France (1937–1940)===
In 1937, Nabokov left Germany for France, where he had a short affair with Irina Guadanini, also a Russian émigrée. His family followed him to France, making en route their last visit to [[Prague]], then spent time in [[Cannes]], [[Menton]], [[Cap d'Antibes]], and [[Fréjus]], finally settling in Paris. This city also had a Russian émigré community.

In 1939, in Paris, Nabokov wrote the 55-page novella ''[[The Enchanter]]'', his final work of Russian fiction.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Heinegg|first=Peter|date=18 September 1986|title=The Enchanter by Vladimir Nabokov; translated by Dmitri Navokov|work=Los Angeles Times|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-09-28-bk-9567-story.html}}</ref> He later called it "the first little throb of ''Lolita''."<ref>{{Cite web|last=Cahill|first=Sarah|date=9 July 1987|title=Reading: The First Throb of Lolita|url=http://chicagoreader.com/news-politics/reading-the-first-throb-of-lolita/|access-date=3 September 2021|website=Chicago Reader|language=en-US}}</ref>

In May 1940, the Nabokovs fled the advancing German troops, reaching the United States via the [[SS Champlain|SS ''Champlain'']]. Nabokov's brother Sergey did not leave France, and he died at the [[Neuengamme concentration camp]] on 9 January 1945.<ref>{{Citation | first = Lev | last = Grossman | url = http://www.salon.com/2000/05/17/nabokov_5/ | title = The gay Nabokov | newspaper = Salon | date = 18 May 2000 | access-date = 8 December 2013 | archive-date = 6 December 2013 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20131206194215/http://www.salon.com/2000/05/17/nabokov_5/ | url-status = live }}.</ref>

===United States===
[[File:957 East State St Ithaca NY NabokovHome1953.jpg|thumb|upright=1|957 East State Street, [[Ithaca, New York]], where Nabokov lived with his family while teaching at [[Cornell University]]]]

====New York City (1940–1941)====
The Nabokovs settled in [[Manhattan]], and Vladimir began volunteer work as an [[entomologist]] at the [[American Museum of Natural History]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Nabokov's Type: Lysandra cormion|url=http://www-v1.amnh.org/news/tag/vladimir-nabokov/|access-date=18 April 2013}}{{Dead link|date=March 2022 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>

====Wellesley College (1941–1948)====
Nabokov joined the staff of [[Wellesley College]] in 1941 as resident lecturer in [[comparative literature]]. The position, created specifically for him, provided an income and free time to write creatively and pursue his [[lepidoptery]]. Nabokov is remembered as the founder of Wellesley's Russian department. The Nabokovs resided in [[Wellesley, Massachusetts]], during the 1941–42 academic year. In September 1942, they moved to nearby [[Cambridge, Massachusetts|Cambridge]], where they lived until June 1948. Following a lecture tour through the United States, Nabokov returned to Wellesley for the 1944–45 academic year as a lecturer in Russian. In 1945, he became a [[naturalized citizen]] of the United States. He served through the 1947–48 term as Wellesley's one-man Russian department, offering courses in Russian language and literature. His classes were popular, due as much to his unique teaching style as to the wartime interest in all things Russian.{{citation needed|date=November 2013}} At the same time he was the de facto  curator of lepidoptery at [[Harvard University]]'s [[Museum of Comparative Zoology]].<ref>{{cite news| title= Nabokov, Scientist| work= Natural History| date= July 1999}}</ref>

====Cornell University (1948–1959)====
After being encouraged by [[Morris Bishop]], Nabokov left Wellesley in 1948 to teach Russian and European literature at [[Cornell University]], where he taught until 1959. Among his students at Cornell was future [[U.S. Supreme Court]] [[Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States|Justice]] [[Ruth Bader Ginsburg]], who later identified Nabokov as a major influence on her development as a writer.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.lawprose.org/interviews/supreme-court.php?vid=ginsburg_part_1&vidtitle=Associate_Justice_Ruth_Bader_Ginsburg_Part_1|title=Supreme Court Interviews|website=LawProse.org|access-date=5 December 2015|archive-date=2 July 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150702105957/http://www.lawprose.org/interviews/supreme-court.php?vid=ginsburg_part_1&vidtitle=Associate_Justice_Ruth_Bader_Ginsburg_Part_1|url-status=dead}}</ref>

Nabokov wrote ''[[Lolita]]'' while traveling on the butterfly-collection trips in the western U.S. that he undertook every summer. Véra acted as "secretary, typist, editor, proofreader, translator and bibliographer; his agent, business manager, legal counsel and chauffeur; his research assistant, teaching assistant and professorial understudy"; when Nabokov attempted to burn unfinished drafts of ''Lolita'', Véra stopped him. He called her the best-humored woman he had ever known.<ref name="MA"/><ref>{{cite news| work= The New York Times| url= https://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/11/obituaries/vera-nabokov-89-wife-muse-and-agent.html |title= Vera Nabokov, 89, Wife, Muse and Agent| date= 11 April 1991}}</ref><ref>{{cite book| first= Brian |last= Boyd| title= Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years| pages= 170, 601}}</ref>

In June 1953, Nabokov and his family went to [[Ashland, Oregon]]. There he finished ''Lolita'' and began writing the novel ''[[Pnin (novel)|Pnin]]''. He roamed the nearby mountains looking for butterflies, and wrote a poem called "Lines Written in Oregon". On 1 October 1953, he and his family returned to Ithaca, where he later taught the young writer [[Thomas Pynchon]].<ref name="medfordmail">{{cite news| url-status= dead| url= http://archive.mailtribune.com/archive/99/sept99/92299n2.htm |title= Snapshot: Nabokov's Retreat| place= Ashland, Oregon | work= [[Mail Tribune]] (Medford, Oregon)| date= 5 November 2006| page= 2 |first= Dani| last= Dodge |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20101202051944/http://archive.mailtribune.com/archive/99/sept99/92299n2.htm |archive-date= 2 December 2010 | access-date= 9 August 2018}}</ref>

===Montreux (1961–1977)===
[[File:Nabokov's grave.JPG|thumb|upright=1|The Nabokovs' gravesite at Cimetière de [[Clarens, Switzerland|Clarens]] near [[Montreux]], Switzerland]]

After the great financial success of ''Lolita'', Nabokov returned to Europe and devoted himself to writing. In 1961, he and Véra moved to the [[Fairmont Le Montreux Palace|Montreux Palace Hotel]] in [[Montreux]], Switzerland, where he remained until the end of his life.<ref name= "theparisreview.org"/> From his sixth-floor quarters, he conducted his business and took tours to the Alps, Corsica, and Sicily to hunt butterflies.

===Death===
Nabokov died of bronchitis on 2 July 1977 in Montreux.<ref>{{Cite news |last=McCrum |first=Robert |date=2009-10-24 |title=The final twist in Nabokov's untold story |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/oct/25/nabokov-original-of-laura-mccrum |access-date=2024-07-13 |work=The Observer |language=en-GB |issn=0029-7712 |archive-date=20 March 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200320033935/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/oct/25/nabokov-original-of-laura-mccrum |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite news| first= Robert| last= McCrum| title= The Final Twist in Nabokov's Untold Story| work= [[The Observer]]| via= theguardian.com| date= 25 October 2009| url= https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/oct/25/nabokov-original-of-laura-mccrum| archive-date= 20 March 2020| access-date= 13 December 2016| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20200320033935/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/oct/25/nabokov-original-of-laura-mccrum| url-status= live}}</ref> His remains were cremated and buried at [[Clarens, Switzerland|Clarens]] cemetery in Montreux.<ref name= GarlandC>{{cite book| title= The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov| editor-first= Vladimir E. |editor-last= Alexandrov | publisher= Garland Publishing| place= New York |year= 1995| isbn= 978-0-8153-0354-1}}</ref>{{rp|xxix–l}}

At the time of his death, he was working on a novel titled ''[[The Original of Laura]]''. Véra and Dmitri, who were entrusted with Nabokov's [[literary executor]]ship,<ref name= "MA"/> ignored Nabokov's request to burn the incomplete manuscript and published it in 2009.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/04/nabokov_original_of_laura.html|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080724052855/http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/04/nabokov_original_of_laura.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=24 July 2008|title=Nabokov's last work will not be burned|work=The Guardian |location=UK |first=Kate |last=Connolly|date=22 April 2008|access-date =24 June 2008}}</ref><ref>{{cite news| url= https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90073521| title= Interview with Dmitri Nabokov| website= NPR.org| date= 30 April 2008| archive-date= 9 March 2021| access-date= 4 April 2018| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20210309012358/https://choice.npr.org/index.html?origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.npr.org%2Ftemplates%2Fstory%2Fstory.php%3FstoryId%3D90073521| url-status= live}}</ref><ref>[https://archive.today/20130124212416/http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iBxjF8uCw6NIn9hlD_8tEsKhlALA Agence Française]</ref>

==Works==
{{Main|Vladimir Nabokov bibliography}}

===Critical reception and writing style===
[[File:Vladimir Nabokov 1960s.jpg|thumb|upright=1|Nabokov in the 1960s]]
[[File:Vladimir Nabokov 1973b.jpg|thumb|upright=1|Nabokov in 1973]]
Nabokov is known as one of the leading prose stylists of the 20th century; his first writings were in Russian, but he achieved his greatest fame with the novels he wrote in English. As a trilingual (also writing in French, see ''[[Mademoiselle O]]'') master, he has been compared to [[Joseph Conrad]], but Nabokov disliked both the comparison and Conrad's work. He lamented to the critic [[Edmund Wilson]], "I am too old to change Conradically"—which [[John Updike]] later called "itself a jest of genius". This lament came in 1941, when Nabokov had been an apprentice American for less than one year.<ref name= Bunny />{{rp|50}} <ref>{{cite book| last= Updike| first= John| title= Hugging the Shore| page= 221}}</ref> Later, in a November 1950 letter to Wilson, Nabokov offers a solid, non-comic appraisal: "Conrad knew how to handle readymade English better than I; but I know better the other kind. He never sinks to the depths of my [[solecisms]], but neither does he scale my verbal peaks."<ref name= Bunny />{{rp|282}} Nabokov translated many of his own early works into English, sometimes in collaboration with his son, Dmitri. His trilingual upbringing had a profound influence on his art.{{citation needed|date=September 2023}}

Nabokov himself translated into Russian two books he originally wrote in English, ''Conclusive Evidence'' and ''Lolita''. The "translation" of ''Conclusive Evidence'' was made because Nabokov felt that the English version was imperfect. Writing the book, he noted that he needed to translate his own memories into English and to spend time explaining things that are well known in Russia; he decided to rewrite the book in his native language before making the final version, ''[[Speak, Memory]]'' (Nabokov first wanted to name it "Speak, [[Mnemosyne]]"). Of translating ''Lolita'', Nabokov writes, "I imagined that in some distant future somebody might produce a Russian version of ''Lolita''. I trained my inner telescope upon that particular point in the distant future and I saw that every paragraph, pock-marked as it is with pitfalls, could lend itself to hideous mistranslation. In the hands of a harmful drudge, the Russian version of ''Lolita'' would be entirely degraded and botched by vulgar paraphrases or blunders. So I decided to translate it myself."<ref>{{cite web|last=Toffler|first=Alvin|title=Playboy interview: Vladimir Nabokov|url=http://lib.ru/NABOKOW/Inter03.txt_with-big-pictures.html|work=Playboy|access-date=5 December 2013|archive-date=8 July 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190708184203/http://lib.ru/NABOKOW/Inter03.txt_with-big-pictures.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

Nabokov was a proponent of [[individualism]], and rejected concepts and ideologies that curtailed individual freedom and expression, such as [[totalitarianism]] in its various forms, as well as [[Sigmund Freud]]'s [[psychoanalysis]].<ref name= GarlandC/>{{rp|412ff}} ''[[Poshlost]]'', or as he transcribed it, ''poshlust'', is disdained and frequently mocked in his works.<ref name= GarlandC />{{rp|628ff}}

Nabokov's creative processes involved writing sections of text on hundreds of [[index card]]s, which he expanded into paragraphs and chapters and rearranged to form the structure of his novels, a process that many screenwriters later adopted.<ref name="theparisreview.org">{{cite interview|last=Nabokov|first=Vladimir|interviewer=Herbert Gold|title=Vladimir Nabokov, The Art of Fiction No. 40|url=http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4310/the-art-of-fiction-no-40-vladimir-nabokov|work=[[The Paris Review]]|issue=41|date=Summer–Fall 1967|access-date=5 June 2018|archive-date=19 January 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160119163826/http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4310/the-art-of-fiction-no-40-vladimir-nabokov|url-status=live}}</ref>

Nabokov published under the pseudonym Vladimir Sirin in the 1920s to 1940s, occasionally to mask his identity from critics.<ref name= "NYTimes obit">{{cite news |url= https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/02/lifetimes/nab-v-obit.html |title=Vladimir Nabokov, Author of 'Lolita' and 'Ada,' Is Dead |last=Whiteman |first=Alden |work=The New York Times |date=5 July 1977 |access-date=10 February 2009}}</ref> He also makes cameo appearances in some of his novels, such as the character Vivian Darkbloom (an [[anagram]] of "Vladimir Nabokov"), who appears in both ''Lolita'' and ''Ada, or Ardor'', and the character Blavdak Vinomori (another anagram of Nabokov's name) in ''King, Queen, Knave''. Sirin is referenced as a different émigré author in his memoir and is also referenced in ''Pnin''.

Nabokov is noted for his complex plots, clever [[word play]], daring metaphors, and prose style capable of both parody and intense lyricism.{{citation needed|date=September 2023}} He gained both fame and notoriety with ''Lolita'' (1955), which recounts a middle-aged man's consuming passion for a 12-year-old girl. This and his other novels, particularly ''[[Pale Fire]]'' (1962), won him a place among the greatest novelists of the 20th century{{citation needed|date=September 2023}} and multiple nominations for the [[Nobel Prize in Literature]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show_people.php?id=15263 |title=Nomination archive Vladimir Nabokov |publisher=nobelprize.org }}</ref>

His longest novel, which met with a mixed response, is ''[[Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle|Ada]]'' (1969). He devoted more time to the composition of it than to any other. Nabokov's fiction is characterized by linguistic playfulness. For example, his short story "[[The Vane Sisters]]" is famous in part for its [[acrostic]] final paragraph, in which the words' first letters spell a message from beyond the grave. Another of his short stories, "[[Signs and Symbols]]", features a character suffering from a fictional illness called "Referential Mania", which drives him to perceive the world as being suffused with coded messages.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Wershler|first=Darren|year=2010|title=The Locative, the Ambient, and the Hallucinatory in the Internet of Things| journal=Design and Culture|volume=2|issue=2|pages=199–216|doi=10.2752/175470710X12696138525703|s2cid=144607114}}</ref>

Nabokov's stature as a literary critic is founded largely on his four-volume translation of and commentary on [[Alexander Pushkin]]'s ''[[Eugene Onegin]]'' published in 1964. The commentary ends with an appendix titled ''[[Notes on Prosody]]'', which has developed a reputation of its own. It stemmed from his observation that while Pushkin's [[iambic tetrameter]]s had been a part of [[Russian literature]] for a fairly short two centuries, they were clearly understood by the Russian prosodists. On the other hand, he viewed the much older English iambic tetrameters as muddled and poorly documented. In his own words:

{{Blockquote|I have been forced to invent a simple little terminology of my own, explain its application to English verse forms, and indulge in certain rather copious details of classification before even tackling the limited object of these notes to my translation of Pushkin's ''Eugene Onegin'', an object that boils down to very little—in comparison to the forced preliminaries—namely, to a few things that the non-Russian student of Russian literature must know in regard to Russian prosody in general and to ''Eugene Onegin'' in particular.}}

===Cornell University lectures===
Nabokov's lectures at [[Cornell University]], as collected in ''Lectures on Literature'', put forth his controversial ideas concerning art.<ref>{{cite book| last = Strehle |first = Susan| title = Actualism: Pynchon's Debt to Nabokov| publisher = University of Wisconsin Press| year = 1971| pages = 37–38}}</ref> He believed that novels should not aim to teach and that readers should not merely empathize with characters but that a "higher" aesthetic enjoyment should be attained, partly by paying great attention to details of style and structure. He detested what he saw as "general ideas" in novels, and so when teaching ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]'', for example, he would insist that students keep an eye on where the characters were in Dublin (with the aid of a map) rather than teaching the complex Irish history that many critics see as essential to understanding the novel.<ref>Collected by Fredson Bowers in 1980 and published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich</ref> Nabokov also wanted his students to describe the details of the novels rather than a narrative of the story and was very strict when it came to grading. [[Edward Jay Epstein]] wrote of his experience in Nabokov's classes that Nabokov made clear from the first lectures that he had little interest in fraternizing with students, who would be known not by their name but by their seat number.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Epstein|first=Edward Jay|author-link=Edward Jay Epstein|title=An A from Nabokov|url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2013/04/04/a-from-nabokov/| journal= [[The New York Review of Books]]| date=4 April 2013|volume=60 |issue=6 |access-date=5 June 2018}}</ref> In 2010, ''Kitsch'' magazine, a student publication at Cornell, published a piece that focused on student reflections on his lectures and explored Nabokov's long relationship with ''[[Playboy]]''.<ref>{{cite web |title=Kitsch Magazine |url=http://kitschmag.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1&limit=9&limitstart=9 |url-status=usurped |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130620160411/http://kitschmag.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1&limit=9&limitstart=9 |archive-date=20 June 2013 |access-date=5 December 2015}}</ref>

==Influence==
[[File:Monument Nabokov Montreux 23.12.2006.jpg|thumb|upright=1|Statue of Nabokov in [[Montreux]], Switzerland]]
{{external media| float = right| width=230px | video1 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?122549-1/nabokov-centenary-celebration Nabokov Centenary Celebration hosted by ''New Yorker'' magazine, April 15, 1999], [[C-SPAN]]}}

The Russian literary critic [[Yuly Aykhenvald]] was an early admirer of Nabokov, citing in particular his ability to imbue objects with life: "he saturates trivial things with life, sense and psychology and gives a mind to objects; his refined senses notice colorations and nuances, smells and sounds, and everything acquires an unexpected meaning and truth under his gaze and through his words."<ref name=Chamberlain>{{cite book|last=Chamberlain|first=Lesley|title=The Philosophy Steamer|year=2006|publisher=Atlantic Books|location=Great Britain|isbn=978-184354-093-9|page=283}}</ref> The critic [[James Wood (critic)|James Wood]] argues that Nabokov's use of descriptive detail proved an "overpowering, and not always very fruitful, influence on two or three generations after him", including authors such as [[Martin Amis]] and [[John Updike]].<ref>Wood, James. [http://www.slate.com/id/2000072/entry/1002666/ "Discussing Nabokov"], Slate. Retrieved 12 April 2008.</ref> While a student at Cornell in the 1950s, [[Thomas Pynchon]] attended several of Nabokov's lectures.<ref>Siegel, Jules. "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?" ''[[Playboy]]'', March 1977.</ref> His debut novel ''[[V.]]'' resembles ''[[The Real Life of Sebastian Knight]]'' in plot, character, narration and style, and the title alludes directly to the narrator "V." in that novel.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Sweeney |first=Susan Elizabeth |title=The V-Shaped Paradigm: Nabokov and Pynchon |journal=Cycnos |date=June 25, 2008 |volume=12 |url=http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/document.html?id=1475 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090719002805/http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/document.html?id=1475 |archive-date=July 19, 2009 }}</ref> Pynchon also alluded to ''Lolita'' in his 1966 novel ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'', in which Serge, countertenor in the band the Paranoids, sings:

{{Poem quote|What chance has a lonely surfer boy
For the love of a surfer chick,
With all these Humbert Humbert cats
Coming on so big and sick?
For me, my baby was a woman,
For him she's just another nymphet.}}

Pynchon's prose style was influenced by Nabokov's preference for actualism over realism.<ref>Strehle, Susan. "Actualism: Pynchon's Debt to Nabokov", ''[[Contemporary Literature]]'' 24.1, Spring 1983. pp. 30–50.</ref> Of the authors who came to prominence during Nabokov's life, [[John Banville]],<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jun/10/johnbanville "John Banville"], ''[[The Guardian]]''. Retrieved 12 April 2008.</ref> [[Don DeLillo]],<ref>Gussow, Mel. [https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A03E2DE1331F936A2575AC0A96E958260 "Toasting (and Analyzing) Nabokov; Cornell Honors the Renaissance Man Who, oh Yes, Wrote 'Lolita{{'"}}], ''The New York Times'', 15 September 1998.</ref> [[Salman Rushdie]],<ref>{{cite web |url= https://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Oct07/Rushdie.cover.gl.html |title=Bombs, bands and birds recalled as novelist Salman Rushdie trips down memory lane |last=Lowery |first=George |work= Cornell Chronicle | publisher= Cornell University |date=23 October 2007 |access-date=12 February 2009}}</ref> and [[Edmund White]]<ref>{{cite web| url= http://www.bookslut.com/features/2007_02_010621.php| title= An Interview with Edmund White| website= Bookslut.com| date= February 2007| access-date= 12 April 2008| archive-date= 5 March 2016| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20160305172953/http://bookslut.com/features/2007_02_010621.php| url-status= dead}}</ref> were all influenced by him. The novelist [[John Hawkes (novelist)|John Hawkes]] took inspiration from Nabokov and considered himself his follower. Nabokov's story "Signs and Symbols" was on the reading list for Hawkes's writing students at Brown University. "A writer who truly and greatly sustains us is Vladimir Nabokov," Hawkes said in a 1964 interview.<ref>"John Hawkes: An Interview. 20 March 1964. John J. Enck and John Hawkes", Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature 6.2 (summer 1965): 144. See also [[Maxim D. Shrayer]], "[http://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/content/view/4459/32/index.html Writing in Tongues] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180817023144/http://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/content/view/4459/32/index.html |date=17 August 2018 }}", ''Brown Alumni Monthly'' September/October 2017;  [https://snob.ru/profile/26497/print/126463 Bez Nabokova]{{Dead link|date=October 2022 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}", ''Snob.ru'' 2 July 2017.</ref>

Several authors who came to prominence in the 1990s and 2000s have also cited Nabokov's work as a literary influence. [[Aleksandar Hemon]] has acknowledged the latter's impact on his writing.<ref>{{Cite magazine |date=2014-12-01 |title=Fiction Podcast: Aleksandar Hemon Reads Vladimir Nabokov |url=https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/fiction-podcast-aleksandar-hemon-reads-vladimir-nabokov |access-date=2024-08-06 |magazine=The New Yorker |language=en-US |issn=0028-792X}}</ref> [[Pulitzer Prize]]-winning novelist [[Michael Chabon]] listed ''Lolita'' and ''Pale Fire'' among the "books that, I thought, changed my life when I read them",<ref>{{cite web|title = It Changed My Life |url= http://www.michaelchabon.com/archives/2005/03/it_changed_my_l.html |archive-url=https://archive.today/20060720152012/http://www.michaelchabon.com/archives/2005/03/it_changed_my_l.html |url-status= dead |archive-date=20 July 2006 |last=Chabon |first=Michael |date=July 2006 |work=michaelchabon.com |access-date=12 February 2009}}</ref> and has said, "Nabokov's English combines aching lyricism with dispassionate precision in a way that seems to render every human emotion in all its intensity but never with an ounce of schmaltz or soggy language".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/vncol26.htm |title=VN Collation No.26 |last=Stringer-Hye |first=Suellen |publisher=Zembla |access-date=12 February 2009 |archive-date=25 December 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081225131756/http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/vncol26.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> [[T. Coraghessan Boyle]] has said that "Nabokov's playfulness and the ravishing beauty of his prose are ongoing influences" on his writing.<ref>{{cite web| url= http://us.penguingroup.com/static/rguides/us/the_inner_circle.html |title= A Conversation with T. C. Boyle| website= penguingroup.com| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20041211034443/http://us.penguingroup.com/static/rguides/us/the_inner_circle.html |archive-date= 11 December 2004 | publisher= Penguin Reading Guides}}</ref> Bilingual author and critic [[Maxim D. Shrayer]], who came to the U.S. as a refugee from the USSR, described reading Nabokov in 1987 as "my culture shock": "I was reading Nabokov and waiting for America."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Shrayer |first1=Maxim D. |title=Waiting for America: A Story of Emigration |date=2006 |publisher=Syracuse University Press |isbn=0815608934 |page=185}}</ref> ''Boston Globe'' book critic David Mehegan wrote that Shrayer's ''Waiting for America'' "is one of those memoirs, like Nabokov's ''Speak, Memory'', that is more about feeling than narrative."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Mehegan |first1=David |title=[Review of "Waiting for America" by Maxim D. Shrayer] |journal=The Boston Globe |date=8 February 2008}}</ref> More recently, in connection with the publication of Shrayer's literary memoir ''Immigrant Baggage'', the critic and [[Stanley Kubrick]] biographer [[David Mikics]] wrote, "Shrayer writes like Nabokov's long lost cousin."<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.academicstudiespress.com/cherry-orchard-books/9781644699980 | title=Immigrant Baggage: Morticians, purloined diaries, and other theatrics of exile | access-date=3 April 2023 | archive-date=3 April 2023 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230403203237/https://www.academicstudiespress.com/cherry-orchard-books/9781644699980 | url-status=dead }}</ref>

Nabokov appears in [[W. G. Sebald]]'s 1993 novel ''[[The Emigrants (Sebald novel)|The Emigrants]]''.<ref name="Cohen">{{cite news| last= Cohen| first= Lisa| url= http://bostonreview.net/BR22.1/prose.html| title= Review: The Emigrants by W. G. Sebald| work= [[Boston Review]]| date= February–March 1997| access-date= 8 July 2010| archive-date= 21 November 2010| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20101121130926/https://bostonreview.net/BR22.1/prose.html| url-status= dead}}</ref>

A [[Nabokov (crater)|crater]] on the planet Mercury was named after Nabokov in 2012.<ref>{{cite web|url = https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/14967|title = Nabokov|publisher = [[IAU]]/[[NASA]]/[[USGS]]|work = Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature|access-date = 16 August 2023|archive-date = 16 August 2023|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20230816145551/https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/14967|url-status = live}}</ref>

===Adaptations===
The song cycle "Sing, Poetry" on the 2011 contemporary classical album ''[[Troika (Julia Kogan album)|Troika]]'' comprises settings of Russian and English versions of three of Nabokov's poems by such composers as [[Jay Greenberg (composer)|Jay Greenberg]], [[Michael Schelle]] and [[Lev Zhurbin]].

==Entomology==
[[File:Butterflies collected by Vladimir Nabokov (AMNH, NY) 02.jpg|thumb|Butterflies collected by Nabokov in California in 1941]]
Nabokov's interest in [[entomology]] was inspired by books by [[Maria Sibylla Merian]] he found in the attic of his family's country home in Vyra.<ref>{{cite book| last = Todd| first= Kim| title= Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis| year= 2007| publisher= Harcourt| page= [https://archive.org/details/chrysalismariasi00todd/page/11 11]| isbn= 978-0-15-101108-7| url= https://archive.org/details/chrysalismariasi00todd/page/11}}</ref> Throughout an extensive career of collecting, he never learned to drive a car, and depended on his wife to take him to collecting sites. During the 1940s, as a research fellow in [[zoology]], he was responsible for organizing the butterfly collection of [[Harvard University]]'s [[Museum of Comparative Zoology]]. He published 18 scientific articles on [[lepidoptery]] and named 12 valid species and genera.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Warodell |first=Johan |date=2020 |title=Beyond the Butterfly: Three Hundred Animal Species in Nabokov's Fiction |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/841823 |journal=Nabokov Studies |language=en |volume=17 |issue=1 |pages=115–120 |doi=10.1353/nab.2020.0001 |issn=1548-9965|url-access=subscription }}</ref> His writings in this area were highly technical. This, combined with his specialty in the relatively unspectacular tribe [[Polyommatini]] of the family [[Lycaenidae]], has left this facet of his life little explored by most admirers of his literary works. He described the [[Karner blue]]. The [[genus]] ''[[Nabokovia]]'' was named after him in honor of this work, as were a number of butterfly and moth species (e.g., many species in the genera ''[[Madeleinea]]'' and ''[[Pseudolucia]]'' bear epithets alluding to Nabokov or names from his novels).<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/dzbutt6.htm |title=Butterflies and moths bearing Nabokov's name |website=libraries.psu.edu |publisher=Zembla |year=1996 |access-date=12 February 2009 |archive-date=29 October 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111029144838/http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/dzbutt6.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> In 1967, Nabokov commented: "The pleasures and rewards of literary inspiration are nothing beside the rapture of discovering a new organ under the microscope or an undescribed species on a mountainside in Iran or [[Peru]]. It is not improbable that had there been no revolution in Russia, I would have devoted myself entirely to lepidopterology and never written any novels at all."<ref name="theparisreview.org"/>

The [[Harvard Museum of Natural History]], which now contains the [[Museum of Comparative Zoology]], still possesses Nabokov's "genitalia cabinet", where the author stored his collection of male blue butterfly genitalia.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/rarestofrarestor0000pick |title=The Rarest of the Rare: Stories Behind the Treasures at the Harvard Museum of Natural History |isbn=978-0-06-053718-0 |first1=Nancy |last1=Pick |first2=Mark |last2=Sloan |publisher=Harper |year=2004 |access-date=10 March 2010 |url-access=registration }}</ref><ref name= bones /> "Nabokov was a serious taxonomist," says museum staff writer Nancy Pick, author of ''The Rarest of the Rare: Stories Behind the Treasures at the Harvard Museum of Natural History''. "He actually did quite a good job at distinguishing species that you would not think were different—by looking at their genitalia under a microscope six hours a day, seven days a week, until his eyesight was permanently impaired."<ref name= bones>{{Cite journal|url = http://www.gsas.harvard.edu/images/stories/pdfs/colloquy_spring05.pdf|title = Blood, Sweat, and Bones|last = Pick|first = Nancy|date =Spring 2005|journal = Colloquy (Alumni Quarterly)|access-date = 19 November 2014|page = 8|url-status = dead|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150908182313/http://www.gsas.harvard.edu/images/stories/pdfs/colloquy_spring05.pdf|archive-date = 8 September 2015|df = dmy-all}}</ref>

Though professional lepidopterists did not take Nabokov's work seriously during his life, new genetic research supports Nabokov's hypothesis that a group of butterfly species, called the ''[[Polyommatus]]'' blues, came to the [[New World]] over the [[Bering Strait]] in five waves, eventually reaching Chile.<ref>{{cite news |title=Nabokov Theory on Butterfly Evolution Is Vindicated |last=Zimmer |first=Carl |author-link=Carl Zimmer |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/science/01butterfly.html |newspaper=The New York Times |date=25 January 2011 |access-date=25 January 2011 |archive-date=6 September 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110906163643/http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/science/01butterfly.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

==Politics and views==
=== Russian politics ===
{{quote box|quote= Russia has always been a curiously unpleasant country despite her great literature. Unfortunately, Russians today have completely lost their ability to kill tyrants.<ref name= RussianYears />{{rp|21}} |source=– Vladimir Nabokov |width=25%|align=right|salign=right|style=padding:8px;}}

Nabokov was a [[classical liberal]], in the tradition of his father, a liberal statesman who served in the [[Russian Provisional Government, 1917|Provisional Government]] following the [[February Revolution]] of 1917 as a member of the [[Constitutional Democratic Party]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Dragunoiu |first1=Dana |title=Vladimir Nabokov and the Poetics of Liberalism |date=2011 |publisher=Northwestern University Press |page=17}}</ref><ref name= StrongO>{{cite book| title= Strong opinions| first= Vladimir |last= Nabokov| publisher= Vintage Books| year= 1990}}</ref> In ''Speak, Memory'', Nabokov proudly recounted his father's campaigns against [[despotism]] and staunch opposition to [[capital punishment]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Dragunoiu |first1=Dana |title=Vladimir Nabokov and the Poetics of Liberalism |date=2011 |publisher=Northwestern University Press |page=29}}</ref> Nabokov was a self-proclaimed "[[White Russian (Russian Civil War)|White Russian]]",<ref name="theparisreview.org"/> and was, from its inception, a strong opponent of the Soviet government that came to power following the [[Bolshevik Revolution]] of October 1917.  In a poem he wrote as a teenager in 1917, he described Lenin's [[Bolshevik]]s as "grey rag-tag people".<ref>{{Cite book |first=Barbara |last=Wyllie |year=2010 |title=Vladimir Nabokov |url=https://archive.org/details/vladimirnabokov00barb |location=London |publisher=Reaktion Books |page=[https://archive.org/details/vladimirnabokov00barb/page/n23 22] |isbn=9781861896605 |oclc=671654363}}</ref>

Throughout his life, Nabokov would remain committed to the classical liberal political philosophy of his father, and equally opposed [[Tsarist autocracy]], [[communism]], and [[fascism]].<ref name= RussianYears>{{cite book |first= Brian| last= Boyd |title=Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years |year=1990 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-0-7011-3700-7}}</ref>{{rp|24–36}} Nabokov's father, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, was one of the most outspoken defenders of Jewish rights in the [[Russian Empire]], continuing a family tradition that had been led by his own father, Dmitry Nabokov, who as [[Tsar Alexander II]]'s justice minister had blocked the interior minister from passing antisemitic measures. That family strain continued in Vladimir Nabokov, who fiercely denounced antisemitism in his writings; in the 1930s, he was able to escape Hitler's Germany only with the help of [[Russian Jewish]] émigrés who still had grateful memories of his family's defense of Jews in Tsarist times.<ref name= RussianYears />{{rp|24}}

When asked in 1969 whether he would like to revisit the land he fled in 1918, now the Soviet Union, he replied: "There's nothing to look at. New tenement houses and old churches do not interest me. The hotels there are terrible. I detest the Soviet theater. Any palace in Italy is superior to the repainted abodes of the Tsars. The village huts in the forbidden hinterland are as dismally poor as ever, and the wretched peasant flogs his wretched cart horse with the same wretched zest. As to my special northern landscape and the haunts of my childhood—well, I would not wish to contaminate their images preserved in my mind."<ref name= StrongO />{{rp|148}}

=== American politics ===
In the 1940s, as an émigré in America, Nabokov stressed the connection between American and English liberal democracy and the aspirations of the short-lived Russian provisional government. In 1942, he declared: "Democracy is humanity at its best ... it is the natural condition of every man ever since the human mind became conscious not only of the world but of itself."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Boyd |first1=Brian |title=Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years |date=2016 |publisher=Princeton University Press |page=41}}</ref> During the 1960s, in both letters and interviews, he reveals a profound contempt for the [[New Left]] movements, calling the protesters "conformists" and "goofy hoodlums".<ref name= StrongO />{{rp|139}}<ref name="larmour17">{{cite book| first= David Henry James |last= Larmour| title= Discourse and ideology in Nabokov's prose| url= https://archive.org/details/discourseideolog00larm | url-access= limited | publisher= Routledge| year= 2002| page= [https://archive.org/details/discourseideolog00larm/page/n20 17]|isbn= 9780415286589}}</ref> In a 1967 interview, Nabokov said that he refused to associate with supporters of Bolshevism or Tsarist autocracy but that he had "friends among intellectual constitutional monarchists as well as among intellectual [[Socialist Revolutionary Party|social revolutionaries]]".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Pifer |first1=Ellen |title=Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita: A Casebook |date=2003 |publisher=Oxford University Press |pages=195–199}}</ref> Nabokov supported the [[Vietnam War]] effort and voiced admiration for both Presidents [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] and [[Richard Nixon]].<ref name="larmour17" /><ref name="pitzer secret1">{{cite book |last1=Pitzer |first1=Andrea |title=The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov |date=2013 |publisher=Open Road Media}}{{page needed|date=July 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite book| first= Stacy |last= Schiff| title= Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)| publisher= Random House Digital| year= 2000}}{{page needed|date=July 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite book| first= Jacob |last= Epstein| title= Book business: publishing past, present, and future| url= https://archive.org/details/bookbusinesspubl00epst | url-access= registration | publisher= W. W. Norton| year= 2002| pages = [https://archive.org/details/bookbusinesspubl00epst/page/76 76–77]|isbn= 9780393322347}}</ref> Racism against African-Americans appalled Nabokov, who touted [[Alexander Pushkin]]'s multiracial background as an argument against segregation.<ref name="pitzer secret1"/>

=== Views on women writers ===
Nabokov's wife [[Véra Nabokov|Véra]] was his strongest supporter and assisted him throughout his life, but Nabokov admitted to a "prejudice" against women writers. He wrote to Edmund Wilson, who had been making suggestions for his lectures: "I dislike [[Jane Austen]], and am prejudiced, in fact against all women writers. They are in another class."<ref name= Bunny>{{cite book| title= Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya: The Nabokov-Wilson Letters, 1940–1971| first= Vladimir| last= Nabokov| editor-first= Simon |editor-last= Karlinsky| edition =Revised | location= Berkeley| publisher= University of California Press| year= 2001}}{{rp|268}}</ref><ref>{{cite book| first= Siggy |last= Frank| title= Nabokov's Theatrical Imagination| publisher= Cambridge University Press| year= 2012| page= 170}}</ref> But after rereading Austen's ''[[Mansfield Park]]'' he changed his mind and taught it in his literature course; he also praised [[Mary McCarthy (author)|Mary McCarthy]]'s work and called [[Marina Tsvetaeva]] a "poet of genius" in ''Speak, Memory''.<ref name= Bunny />{{rp|274}} Although Véra worked as his personal translator and secretary, he made publicly known that his ideal translator would be male, and especially not a "Russian-born female".<ref>{{cite journal| first= Ellen |last= Pifer| title= Her monster, his nymphet: Nabokov and Mary Shelley| journal= Nabokov and His Fiction: New Perspectives| editor-first= Julian W. |editor-last= Connolly| year= 1999|pages= 158–176|doi= 10.1017/CBO9780511597718.010|isbn= 9780521632836}}</ref><ref>{{cite book| first= David S. |last= Rutledge| title= Nabokov's Permanent Mystery: The Expression of Metaphysics in His Work| url= https://archive.org/details/nabokovspermanen00rutl | url-access= limited | location= Jefferson, North Carolina| publisher= McFarland & Company| year= 2011| chapter= fn. 7| page= [https://archive.org/details/nabokovspermanen00rutl/page/n199 187]|isbn= 9780786460762}}</ref> In the first chapter of ''[[Glory (Nabokov novel)|Glory]]'' he attributes the protagonist's similar prejudice to the impressions made by children's writers like [[Lidia Charskaya|Lidiya Charski]],<ref>From Chapter 1: "Martin's first books were in English: his mother loathed the Russian magazine for children ''Zadushevnoe Slovo'' (The Heartfelt Word), and inspired in him such aversion for Madame Charski's young heroines with dusky complexions and titles that even later Martin was wary of any book written by a woman, sensing even in the best of such books an unconscious urge on the part of a middle-aged and perhaps chubby lady to dress up in a pretty name and curl up on the sofa like a pussy cat."</ref> and the short story "The Admiralty Spire" deplores the posturing, snobbery, antisemitism, and cutesiness he considered characteristic of Russian women authors.{{Disputed inline|Views on women writers|date=January 2018}}

==Personal life==
===Synesthesia===
Nabokov was a self-described [[synesthesia|synesthete]], who at a young age equated the number five with the color red.<ref>Martin, Patrick. "Synaesthesia, metaphor and right-brain functioning" in ''Egoist''.</ref> Aspects of synesthesia can be found in several of his works. His wife also exhibited synesthesia; like her husband, her mind's eye associated colors with particular letters. They discovered that Dmitri shared the trait, and moreover that the colors he associated with some letters were in some cases blends of his parents' hues—"which is as if [[gene]]s were painting in [[aquarelle]]".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.kulichki.com/moshkow/NABOKOW/Inter02.txt|title=Nabokov's interview|publisher=BBC Television|year=1962|via=kulichki.com|access-date=5 December 2015|archive-date=5 March 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160305022644/http://www.kulichki.com/moshkow/NABOKOW/Inter02.txt|url-status=live}}</ref> Nabokov also wrote that his mother had synesthesia, and that she had different letter-color pairs.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bouchet |first1=Marie |last2=Loison-Charles |first2=Julie |last3=Poulin |first3=Isabelle |title=The Five Senses in Nabokov's Works |date=19 June 2020 |publisher=Springer Nature |isbn=978-3-030-45406-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=T2jsDwAAQBAJ |language=en |page=247}}</ref>

For some synesthetes, letters are not simply ''associated with'' certain colors, they ''are themselves'' colored. Nabokov frequently endowed his protagonists with a similar gift. In ''[[Bend Sinister (novel)|Bend Sinister]]'', Krug comments on his perception of the word "loyalty" as like a golden fork lying out in the sun. In ''The Defense'', Nabokov briefly mentions that the main character's father, a writer, found he was unable to complete a novel that he planned to write, becoming lost in the fabricated storyline by "starting with colors".  Many other subtle references are made in Nabokov's writing that can be traced back to his synesthesia. Many of his characters have a distinct "sensory appetite" reminiscent of synesthesia.<ref>{{cite book| first= John Burt |last= Foster |year= 1993| title= Nabokov's Art of Memory and European Modernism| url= https://archive.org/details/nabokovsartmemor00fost | url-access= limited | publisher= Princeton University Press | pages= [https://archive.org/details/nabokovsartmemor00fost/page/n43 26]–32|isbn= 9780691069715 }}</ref>

Nabokov described his synesthesia at length in his autobiography ''[[Speak, Memory]]'':<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bouchet |first1=Marie |last2=Loison-Charles |first2=Julie |last3=Poulin |first3=Isabelle |title=The Five Senses in Nabokov's Works |date=19 June 2020 |publisher=Springer Nature |isbn=978-3-030-45406-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=T2jsDwAAQBAJ |language=en |pages=255–256}}</ref>

{{blockquote|I present a fine case of colored hearing. Perhaps "hearing" is not quite accurate, since the color sensations seem to be produced by the very act of my orally forming a given letter while I imagine its outline. The long ''a'' of the English alphabet (and it is this alphabet I have in mind farther on unless otherwise stated) has for me the tint of weathered wood, but the French ''a'' evokes polished ebony. This black group also includes hard ''g'' (vulcanized rubber) and ''r'' (a sooty rag being ripped). Oatmeal ''n'', noodle-limp ''l'', and the ivory-backed hand mirror of ''o'' take care of the whites. I am puzzled by my French ''on'' which I see as the brimming tension-surface of alcohol in a small glass. Passing on to the blue group, there is steely ''x'', thundercloud ''z'', and huckleberry ''k''. Since a subtle interaction exists between sound and shape, I see ''q'' as browner than ''k'', while ''s'' is not the light blue of ''c'', but a curious mixture of [[Azure (color)|azure]] and [[mother-of-pearl]].}}

=== Religion ===
Nabokov was a religious [[Agnosticism|agnostic]].<ref>{{cite book|title=Vladimir Nabokov|year=1974|publisher=F. Ungar Publishing Company|isbn=9780804426381|page=[https://archive.org/details/vladimirnabokov00dona/page/8 8]|first=Donald E.|last=Morton|quote=Nabokov is a self-affirmed agnostic in matters religious, political, and philosophical.|url=https://archive.org/details/vladimirnabokov00dona/page/8}}</ref> He was very open about, and received criticism for, his indifference to organized [[mysticism]], to religion, and to any church.<ref>{{Cite web|date=16 August 2016|title=Playboy Interview: Vladimir Nabokov|url=http://reprints.longform.org/playboy-interview-vladimir-nabokov|access-date=5 August 2020|website=Atavist|language=en|archive-date=3 August 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200803164231/http://reprints.longform.org/playboy-interview-vladimir-nabokov|url-status=dead}}</ref>

=== Sleep ===
Nabokov was a notorious, lifelong insomniac who admitted unease at the prospect of sleep, once saying, "the night is always a giant".<ref>{{Cite news|last=Parkin|first=Simon|date=14 September 2018|title=Finally, a cure for insomnia?|language=en-GB|work=The Guardian|url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/14/finally-a-cure-for-insomnia|access-date=3 July 2020|issn=0261-3077}}</ref> Later in life his insomnia was exacerbated by an enlarged prostate.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/what-vladimir-nabokov-saw-in-his-dreams|title=The Enthralling, Anxious World of Vladimir Nabokov's Dreams|last=Piepenbring|first=Dan|magazine=The New Yorker|date=8 February 2018|access-date=23 November 2019|language=en|issn=0028-792X}}</ref> Nabokov called sleep a "moronic fraternity", "mental torture", and a "nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/12/19/vladimir-nabokovs-dream-diary-2/|title=For three months in 1964, Vladimir Nabokov wrote down his dreams every morning, pursuing a theory that time flows backward|date=19 December 2017|website=The Vintage News|language=en|access-date=23 November 2019}}</ref> Insomnia's impact on his work has been widely explored, and in 2017 [[Princeton University Press]] published a compilation of his dream diary entries, ''Insomniac Dreams: Experiments with Time by Vladimir Nabokov''.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Insomniac Dreams|last=Nabokov|first=Vladimir|publisher=Princeton University Press|year=2017|isbn=978-0-691-16794-7|editor-last=Barabtarlo|editor-first=Gennady|language=en}}</ref>

===Chess problems===
Nabokov spent considerable time during his exile composing [[chess problem]]s, which he published in Germany's Russian émigré press, ''[[Poems and Problems]]'' (18 problems) and ''[[Speak, Memory]]'' (one). He describes the process of composing and constructing in his memoir: "The strain on the mind is formidable; the element of time drops out of one's consciousness". To him, the "originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity" of creating a chess problem was similar to that in any other art.

==List of works==
{{Main|Vladimir Nabokov bibliography}}
[[File:RUSMARKA-3239.jpg|thumb|Nabokov on a 2024 postal stamp of Russia]]
;Main works written in Russian
* (1926) ''[[Mary (novel)|Mary]]''
* (1928) ''[[King, Queen, Knave]]''
* (1930) ''The Luzhin Defense'' or ''[[The Defense]]''
* (1930) ''[[The Eye (novel)|The Eye]]''
* (1932) ''[[Glory (Nabokov novel)|Glory]]''
* (1933) ''[[Laughter in the Dark (novel)|Laughter in the Dark]]''
* (1934) ''[[Despair (novel)|Despair]]''
* (1936) ''[[Invitation to a Beheading]]''
* (1938) ''[[The Gift (Nabokov novel)|The Gift]]''
* (1939) ''[[The Enchanter]]''

;Main works written in English
* (1941) ''[[The Real Life of Sebastian Knight]]'' 
* (1947) ''[[Bend Sinister (novel)|Bend Sinister]]'' 
* (1955) ''[[Lolita]]'', self-translated into Russian (1965)
* (1957) ''[[Pnin (novel)|Pnin]]'' 
* (1962) ''[[Pale Fire]]''
* (1967) ''[[Speak, Memory|Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited]]'' 
* (1969) ''[[Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle]]'' 
* (1972) ''[[Transparent Things (novel)|Transparent Things]]'' 
* (1974) ''[[Look at the Harlequins!]]''
* (2009) ''[[The Original of Laura]]'' (fragmentary; written during the mid-1970s and published posthumously)

==See also==
* [[List of Russian Academy Award winners and nominees]]

==Notes==
{{Notelist|refs=
{{efn|name=note1|Confusion over his birth date was generated by some people misunderstanding the relationship between the [[Julian calendar|Julian]] and [[Gregorian calendar|Gregorian]] calendars. At the time of Nabokov's birth, the offset between the calendars was 12 days. His date of birth in the Julian calendar was 10 April 1899; in the Gregorian, 22 April 1899.<ref>[[#BrianBoydTheAmericanYears|Brian Boyd]] p.&nbsp;37</ref> The fact that the offset increased from 12 to 13 days for dates occurring after February 1900 was always irrelevant to earlier dates, and hence a 13-day offset should never have been applied to Nabokov's date of birth. Nevertheless, it was so misapplied by some writers, and 23 April came to be erroneously shown in many places as his birthday. In his memoirs ''[[Speak, Memory]]'' Nabokov indicates that 22 April was the correct date but that he nevertheless preferred to celebrate his birthday "with diminishing pomp" on 23 April (p.&nbsp;6).{{Vague|date=July 2018}}<!-- page 6 of which edition? --> As he happily pointed out on several occasions during interviews, this meant he also shared a birthday with [[William Shakespeare]] and [[Shirley Temple]].<ref name= RussianYears /><ref>{{cite news| work= The New York Times| title= Interview with Vladimir Nabokov| first= Alden |last= Whitman | date= 23 April 1969| page= 20}}</ref>
}}
}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Further reading==
===Biography===
{{Refbegin|40em}}
* {{cite book |author= Boyd, Brian |author-link= Brian Boyd |title= Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years |place= Princeton, N.J. |publisher= Princeton University Press |url = https://archive.org/details/vladimirnabokovr0000boyd/page/n3/mode/2up?view=theater |url-access=registration |year= 1990 |isbn=0-691-06794-5}} (hardback) 1997. {{ISBN|0-691-02470-7}} (paperback). London: Chatto & Windus, 1990. {{ISBN|0-7011-3700-2}} (hardback)
*{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/vladimirnabokova00boyd |url-access=registration|title=Vladimir Nabokov: the American years|last=Boyd|first=Brian|date=1991|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=069106797X|location=Princeton, N.J.|oclc=22906836|ref=BrianBoydTheAmericanYears}}
*{{Cite book| publisher = Harvard University Press| isbn = 978-0-674-01819-8| last = Chien| first = Evelyn Nien-Ming| title = Weird English| chapter = A Shuttlecock Over the Atlantic| location = Cambridge, Massachusetts; London| date = 2005}}
*Field, Andrew. ''VN The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov''. New York: Crown Publishers. 1986. {{ISBN|0-517-56113-1}}
*Golla, Robert. ''Conversations with Vladimir Nabokov''. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. 2017. {{ISBN|978-1496810953}}
*Parker, Stephen Jan. ''Understanding Vladimir Nabokov''. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. 1987. {{ISBN|978-0872494954}}
*Proffer, Elendea, ed. ''Vladimir Nabokov: A Pictorial Biography.'' Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1991. {{ISBN|0-87501-078-4}} (a collection of photographs)
*Rivers, J.E., and [[Charles Nicol|Nicol, Charles]].  ''Nabokov's Fifth Arc.''  Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1982. {{ISBN|978-0-292-75522-2}}.
*[[Stacy Schiff|Schiff, Stacy]]. ''Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov).''  New York, NY.: Random House, 1999. {{ISBN|0-679-44790-3}}.
{{Refend}}

===Criticism===
{{Refbegin|40em}}
*{{Cite book| publisher = Princeton University Press| isbn = 978-0-691-06866-4| last = Alexandrov| first = Vladimir E.| title = Nabokov's otherworld| location = Princeton, N.J| date = 1991}}
*{{Cite book| publisher = University of California Press| isbn = 978-0-520-02167-9| last = Bader| first = Julia| title = Crystal land; artifice in Nabokov's English novels| location = Berkeley| date = 1972| url-access = registration| url = https://archive.org/details/crystallandartif0000bade}}
*{{Cite book| publisher = Ardis| isbn = 978-0-87501-060-1| last = Barabtarlo| first = Gennady| title = Phantom of fact: a guide to Nabokov's Pnin| location = Ann Arbor| date = 1989}}
*{{Cite book| publisher = Ohio State University Press| isbn = 978-0-8142-1099-4| last = Blackwell| first = Stephen H.| title = The quill and the scalpel: Nabokov's art and the worlds of science| location = Columbus| date = 2009}}
*{{Cite book| publisher = Princeton University Press| isbn = 978-0-691-00959-9| last = Boyd| first = Brian| title = Nabokov's Pale fire: the magic of artistic discovery| location = Princeton, NJ| date = 1999| url = https://archive.org/details/nabokovspalefire00boyd_0}}
*{{Cite book| publisher = Academic Studies Press| isbn = 978-1-934843-65-9 | last = Connolly| first = Julian W.| title = A reader's guide to Nabokov's "Lolita"| location = Boston| series = Studies in Russian and Slavic literatures, cultures and history| date = 2009}}
*{{Cite book| publisher = Princeton University Press| isbn = 978-0-691-06971-5| last = Foster| first = John Burt| title = Nabokov's art of memory and European modernism| location = Princeton, N.J| date = 1993}}
*{{Cite book| publisher = McFarland & Co| isbn = 978-0-7864-6357-2| last1 = Hardy| first1 = James D.| last2 = Martin| first2 = Ann| title = "Light of my life": love, time and memory in Nabokov's Lolita| location = Jefferson, N.C.; London| date = 2011}}
*{{Cite book| publisher = Ardis| isbn = 978-0-88233-908-5| last = Johnson| first = Donald B.| title = Worlds in regression: some novels of Vladimir Nabokov| location = Ann Arbor| date = 1985}}
*Livry, Anatoly. [http://www.editions-hermann.fr/ficheproduit.php?lang=fr&menu=&ref=Critiques+litt%E9raire+Nabokov+le+nietszch%E9en&prodid=892 «Nabokov le Nietzschéen»] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130921164302/http://www.editions-hermann.fr/ficheproduit.php?lang=fr&menu=&ref=Critiques+litt%E9raire+Nabokov+le+nietszch%E9en&prodid=892 |date=21 September 2013 }}, HERMANN, Paris, 2010 {{in lang|fr}}
*[http://exlibris.ng.ru/non-fiction/2011-06-02/6_game.html Ливри, Анатолий. Физиология Сверхчеловека. Введение в третье тысячелетие] СПб.: Алетейя, 2011 312 с. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110816062952/http://exlibris.ng.ru/non-fiction/2011-06-02/6_game.html|date=16 August 2011}}
*{{Cite book| edition = 1st| publisher = Wesleyan University Press| isbn = 978-0-8195-5206-8| last = Meyer| first = Priscilla| title = Find what the sailor has hidden: Vladimir Nabokov's Pale fire| location = Middletown, Conn| date = 1988| url = https://archive.org/details/findwhatsailorha00pris}}
*{{Cite book| publisher = University of Toronto Press| isbn = 978-1-4426-4020-7| last = Morris| first = Paul Duncan| title = Vladimir Nabokov: poetry and the lyric voice| location = Toronto; Buffalo|year= 2010}}
*{{Cite book| publisher = Garland | isbn = 978-0-8153-0857-7| editor-last1=Nicol|editor-first1=Charles|editor-link1=Charles Nicol|editor-last2=Barabtarlo |editor-first2=Gennady | title = A Small Alpine form: studies in Nabokov's short fiction| location = New York| series = Garland reference library of the humanities|year= 1993}}
*{{Cite book| publisher = Routledge & Kegan Paul | isbn = 978-0-71009-223-6| editor-last=Page|editor-first=Norman| title = Nabokov: The Critical Heritage| location = London| series = The Critical Heritage series|year= 1982}}
*{{Cite book| publisher = Harvard University Press| isbn = 978-0-674-59840-9| last = Pifer| first = Ellen| title = Nabokov and the novel| location = Cambridge, Massachusetts| date = 1980| url = https://archive.org/details/nabokovnovel00pife}}
*{{Cite book| publisher = McFarland & Co| isbn = 978-0-7864-6076-2| last = Rutledge| first = David S.| title = Nabokov's permanent mystery: the expression of metaphysics in his work| location = Jefferson, N.C| date = 2011}}
*{{Cite book| publisher = Bloomsbury| isbn = 978-1-62892-426-8 | last = Schuman| first = Samuel| title = Nabokov's Shakespeare| location = New York| date = 2014}}
*{{Cite book| publisher = University of Texas Press| isbn = 978-0-292-77733-0| last = Shrayer| first = Maxim D.| title = The World of Nabokov's Stories| location = Austin| series = Literary modernism series| date = 1998| url-access = registration| url = https://archive.org/details/worldofnabokovss0000shra}}
*{{Cite book| publisher = Cambridge University Press| isbn = 978-0-521-63283-6| last = Shrayer| first = Maxim D.| author-mask = 3 | chapter-url = https://archive.org/details/nabokovhisfictio00conn/page/n86 | editor-last =Connolly | editor-first = Julian W. |title = Nabokov and His Fiction: New Perspectives| url = https://archive.org/details/nabokovhisfictio00conn| url-access = limited| chapter = Jewish Questions in Nabokov's Life and Art| location = Cambridge; New York| series = Cambridge Studies in Russian Literature |pages=73–91 | date = 1999}}
*{{Cite book| publisher = Louisiana State University Press | author-last=Stuart | author-first=Dabney | title = Nabokov: The Dimensions of Parody | year= 1978}}
*{{Cite book| publisher = Cornell University Press| isbn = 978-0-8014-2211-9| last = Toker| first = Leona| title = Nabokov: the mystery of literary structures| location = Ithaca| date = 1989| url = https://archive.org/details/nabokovmysteryof00toke}}
*{{Cite book| edition = 1st | publisher = Palgrave Macmillan| isbn = 978-0-230-10261-3| last = Trousdale| first = Rachel| title = Nabokov, Rushdie, and the transnational imagination: novels of exile and alternate worlds| location = New York| date = 2010}}
*{{Cite book| publisher = Endellion Press| isbn = 978-1739136109| last = Vernon| first = David| title = Ada to Zembla: The Novels of Vladimir Nabokov| location = Edinburgh| date = 2022}}
*{{Cite book| publisher = Princeton University Press| isbn = 978-0-691-00632-1| last = Wood| first = Michael| title = The Magician's Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction| location = Princeton, N.J| date = 1995}}
*{{Cite book| edition = 1st| publisher = W.W. Norton & Co| isbn = 978-0-393-07992-0| last = Azam Zanganeh| first = Lila| title = The enchanter: Nabokov and happiness| location = New York| date = 2011| url = https://archive.org/details/enchanternabokov0000azam}}
{{Refend}}

===Bibliography===
* Alexandrov, Vladimir E., ed. ''The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov''. New York: Garland Publishing, 1995. {{ISBN|0-8153-0354-8}}.
* Funke, Sarah. ''Véra's Butterflies: First Editions by Vladimir Nabokov Inscribed to his Wife''. New York: Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, 1999. {{ISBN|0-9654020-1-0}}.
* Juliar, Michael. ''Vladimir Nabokov: A Descriptive Bibliography''. New York: [[Garland Publishing]], 1986. {{ISBN|0-8240-8590-6}}.
* [[Manuel Vázquez Montalbán|Montalbán, Manuel Vázquez]]; [[Willi Glasauer|Glasauer, Willi]]. ''Escenas de la Literatura Universal y Retratos de Grandes Autores''. Barcelona: Círculo de Lectores, 1988.

===Media adaptations===
* [[Peter Medak]]'s short television film, ''Nabokov on Kafka'', is a [[Adaptation (arts)|dramatisation]] of Nabokov's lectures on [[Franz Kafka]]'s ''[[The Metamorphosis]]''. The part of Nabokov is played by [[Christopher Plummer]].
*Nabokov makes three cameo appearances, at widely scattered points in his life, in [[W. G. Sebald]]'s ''[[The Emigrants (Sebald novel)|The Emigrants]]''.<!--<ref name="Cohen"/>-->
* See ''[[Lolita]]''.
* In 1972 the novel ''[[King, Queen, Knave]]'' was released as a [[King, Queen, Knave (film)|movie]] directed by [[Jerzy Skolimowski]] and starring [[Gina Lollobrigida]], [[David Niven]] and [[John Moulder-Brown]].
* In 1978 the novel ''[[Despair (novel)|Despair]]'' was adapted by [[Tom Stoppard]] for the movie directed by [[Rainer Werner Fassbinder]].
* In 1986 his first novel ''[[Mary (novel)|Mary]]'' (in Russian ''Maschenka'') was loosely adapted for the movie ''Maschenka'', starring [[Cary Elwes]].
* The novel ''[[The Defense]]'' was adapted as a feature film, ''[[The Luzhin Defence]]'', in 2000 by director Marleen Gorris.  The film starred John Turturro and Emily Watson.

===Entomology===
* Johnson, Kurt, and Steve Coates. ''Nabokov's blues: The scientific odyssey of a literary genius''. New York: McGraw-Hill. {{ISBN|0-07-137330-6}} (very accessibly written)
* Sartori, Michel, ed. ''Les Papillons de Nabokov'' [The butterflies of Nabokov]. Lausanne: Musée cantonal de Zoologie, 1993. {{ISBN|2-9700051-0-7}} (exhibition catalogue, primarily in English)
* Zimmer, Dieter E. ''A Guide to Nabokov's Butterflies and Moths''. Privately published, 2001. {{ISBN|3-00-007609-3}} (web page)

===Other===
* Deroy, Chloé, ''Vladimir Nabokov, Icare russe et Phénix américain'' (2010). Dijon: EUD
* Gezari, Janet K.; Wimsatt, W. K., [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2929973 "Vladimir Nabokov: More Chess Problems and the Novel"], ''Yale French Studies'', No. 58, In Memory of Jacques Ehrmann: Inside Play Outside Game (1979), pp.&nbsp;102–115, Yale University Press.

==External links==
{{Sister project links|auto=yes|d=Q36591}}
* [http://vladimir-nabokov.org/ Vladimir-Nabokov.org] – Site of the Vladimir Nabokov French Society, Enchanted Researchers (Société française Vladimir Nabokov : Les Chercheurs Enchantés).
* [http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/epo/nabokov/ "Nabokov under Glass"] – New York Public Library exhibit.
* {{cite journal| url=http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4310/the-art-of-fiction-no-40-vladimir-nabokov| journal=The Paris Review| volume=Summer-Fall 1967| issue=41| title=Vladimir Nabokov, The Art of Fiction No. 40| author=Herbert Gold| date=Summer–Fall 1967 }}
* [https://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/04/nabokov.htm ''The Atlantic Monthly''] – Review of ''Nabokov's Butterflies''
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20051125234537/http://www.fathom.com/course/10701032/index.html "The Life and Works of Vladimir Nabokov"]. The [[New York Public Library]], profile and lectures. 2002
* {{ISFDB name|id=15974|name=Vladimir Nabokov}}
* [http://stihipoeta.ru/poety-serebryanogo-veka/vladimir-nabokov/ Vladimir Nabokov poetry] {{in lang|ru}}
* {{Oregon Encyclopedia|nabokov_vladimir_in_oregon|author=Don Reynolds}}
* [http://etc.dal.ca/noj/ Nabokov Online Journal] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130825222831/http://etc.dal.ca/noj/ |date=25 August 2013 }}
* [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/nov/14/vladimir-nabokov-books-martin-amis "The problem with Nabokov"]. By [[Martin Amis]] 14 November 2009
* [http://rbth.ru/articles/2010/02/24/240210_nabokov.html "Talking about Nabokov"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130825211653/http://rbth.ru/articles/2010/02/24/240210_nabokov.html |date=25 August 2013 }} George Feifer, [[Russia Beyond the Headlines]], 24 February 2010
* [http://www.salon.com/2000/05/17/nabokov_5/ "The Gay Nabokov"]. ''Salon'' Magazine 17 May 2000
* [https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/profilepages/nabokovv1.shtml BBC interviews 4 October 1969]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20120818193313/http://www.vnbiblio.com/ Nabokov Bibliography: All About Vladimir Nabokov in Print]
* {{Internet Archive author |sname= Vladimir Nabokov}}
* [https://www.yacpdb.org/#search/ODg4ODg4ODgv0J3QsNCx0L7QutC+0LIsINCS0LvQsNC00LjQvNC40YAg0JLQu9Cw0LTQuNC80LjRgNC+0LLQuNGHLy8vLy8vLy8vLy8vLzEvMS8xLzA=/1 Vladmir Nabokov chess compositions] at [https://www.yacpdb.org/ YACPDB]
* [http://thenabokovian.org The Nabokovian (International Vladimir Nabokovian Society)]

{{Vladimir Nabokov|state=expanded}}
{{Lolita}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nabokov, Vladimir}}
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