American · 1899–1977
Vladimir Nabokov was a Russian-born writer who produced major work in both Russian and English. Born into a wealthy St. Petersburg family, he left Russia after the 1917 revolution, studied at Cambridge, and lived in Berlin and Paris, publishing Russian novels such as Mary, The Defense and Invitation to a Beheading under the name V. Sirin. He moved to the United States in 1940, taught literature at Wellesley and Cornell, and began writing in English. His English novels include The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Lolita, Pnin and Pale Fire. He also wrote the memoir Speak, Memory, translated Eugene Onegin with a long commentary, and published sixty-five short stories. A trained lepidopterist, he described and classified butterflies and put them into his fiction. Lolita made him famous in 1958. He moved to Montreux, Switzerland, in 1961 and lived there until his death in 1977. He is ranked among the great prose stylists of the twentieth century.