The Modern Novel

Biography

Vladimir Nabokov was born in St Petersburg in 1899. He was the eldest of five children. His father was a distinguished politician and lawyer. Both parents came from distinguished Russian families. His father was an Anglophile and hired English governesses, so that Nabokov learned English as a child. When he was seven, his father hired a Swiss governess and he learned French. He was initially taught by private tutors but, in 1911, he attended the Tenishev School but he did not like it. He started writing poetry in English, French and Russian but was particularly inspired by his first love, Valentina Shul’gina. He published his first collection of poetry at his own expense in 1916. That same year, his uncle died and left him a large estate. However, the Tsar abdicated the next year. Nabokov’s father was appointed Head of Chancellery in the provisional government but, when the Bolsheviks seized power, the family fled to Crimea.

The family had to flee again, when the Bolsheviks seized Crimea and eventually landed in London. Nabokov went to Cambridge University where he studied languages (French and Russian). While he was at Cambridge, his family moved to Berlin. While visiting his family there, his father was shot while trying to defend another politician from an assassination attempt. Nabokov himself moved to Berlin when he had graduated from Cambridge. He published poetry under the pseudonym Vladimir Sirin but made his living teaching languages. In 1923 he met his future wife, Vera Slonim and started gradually to write in prose and write drama. After marrying Vera in 1925, he wrote his first novel, Машенька (Mary), which was published by an émigré Russian publisher. His first major success came with Защита Лужина (The Luzhin Defense; The Defense), which was hailed by émigré Russian critics. He continued to write novels in Russian. However, with the deteriorating economic and political situation in Germany, the family moved to Paris in 1937.

Though he continued to write in Paris, their financial situation was still not sound and Nabokov started to write in English. In 1938 he wrote The Real Life of Sebastian Knight but did not find a publisher till 1941. He travelled to England in 1939 to look for work but was not successful but he did get an offer of work at Stanford. In 1940, soon after the Germans had invaded France, the family sailed to New York. He taught at Stanford and Wellesley as well as having a part-time research position at Harvard in lepidoptera. In 1945, he became a US citizen and in 1948 he became head of Cornell’s comparative literature department. His writings in English were not having much success, till he published Lolita. Initially, no US publisher would touch it and it was first published by the Olympia Press in Paris. Graham Greene discovered it and recommended it. There was a lot of controversy surrounding the book before an American publisher (Putnam’s) agreed to publish it.

The book was highly successful, both critically and commercially, and enabled the Nabokovs to move to Europe. They settled in Montreux, Switzerland. Nabokov continued to write novels and his son, Dmitri, translated his Russian works into English. His reputation continued to grow and he is now recognised as one of the great writers of the twentieth century. He died in Montreux in 1977.

Books about Vladimir Nabokov

Brian Boyd: Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years; Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years (the best biography)
Andrew Field: Nabokov: His Life in Art

Other links

Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
O Window in the Dark! The Early Career of Vladimir Nabokov
Nabokov tutorials (50 studies of The Collected Stories)
Scraping the Barrel (unpublished Nabokov)
Talking about Nabokov
The gay Nabokov
Nabokov Online Journal
Some Thoughts on Alfred Hitchcock and Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita author Vladimir Nabokov’s butterfly theory proved right
Interview
Interview
Interview
Interview
Набоков, писатель (in Russian)

Texts
Владимир Набоков (texts of his works – in Russian)
Набоков – Nabokov (texts of all nineteen novels in Russian as well above Nabokov works in both Russian and English)