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83-739: Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (Russian: Владимир Владимирович Набоков [vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvʲɪtɕ nɐˈbokəf] ; 22 April [ O.S. 10 April] 1899 – 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin ( Владимир Сирин ), was a Russian-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 . He achieved international acclaim and prominence after moving to

166-483: 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 , for example, he would insist 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 being essential to an understanding of

249-404: 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." Nabokov translated many of his own early works into English, sometimes in collaboration with his son, Dmitri. His trilingual upbringing had

332-596: A Russian-Jewish woman, at a charity ball in Berlin. They married in April 1925. Their only child, 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. In 1937, Nabokov left Germany for France, where he had

415-488: A charity bazaar, about a golden-haired girl whose mother dies of scarlet fever , and advised that it should be published. "A Very Simple Story" appeared commercially in 1867 with illustrations by Sibyl Montgomery. Montgomery drew a distinction between her stories for children and her stories about children, which were intended for an adult audience as an encouragement to recognize children's merits. Misunderstood (1869), for instance, features an unperceptive father and

498-772: A curiously unpleasant country despite her great literature. Unfortunately, Russians today have completely lost their ability to kill tyrants. – Vladimir Nabokov Nabokov was a classical liberal , in the tradition of his father, a liberal statesman who served in the Provisional Government following the February Revolution of 1917 as a member of the Constitutional Democratic Party . In Speak, Memory , Nabokov proudly recounted his father's campaigns against despotism and staunch opposition to capital punishment . Nabokov

581-575: A day, seven days a week, until his eyesight was permanently impaired." 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. Russia has always been

664-780: A friend's estate and in September 1918 moved to Livadiya , at the time under the separatist Crimean Regional Government , in which Nabokov's father became a minister of justice. After the withdrawal of the 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

747-432: A grown 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. His longest novel, which met with a mixed response, is 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 "

830-516: A letter dated "12/22 Dec. 1635". In his biography of John Dee , The Queen's Conjurer , Benjamin Woolley surmises that because Dee fought unsuccessfully for England to embrace the 1583/84 date set for the change, "England remained outside the Gregorian system for a further 170 years, communications during that period customarily carrying two dates". In contrast, Thomas Jefferson , who lived while

913-425: 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. His cousins included the composer Nicolas Nabokov . His paternal grandfather, Dmitry Nabokov,

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996-576: A more specialised lump to one's throat than anything in Dickens or Daudet." Almost all of Montgomery's novels were translated into German and French, and some into Italian, Dutch and Russian. Misunderstood has had two film adaptations: the Italian film Incompreso in 1966, and the American film Misunderstood in 1984. Montgomery never married, and had no children. She lived her whole life in

1079-547: A profound influence on his art. 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

1162-417: A recognised poet and writer in Russian within the émigré community; he published under the nom de plume V. Sirin (a reference to the fabulous bird of Russian folklore). To supplement his scant writing income, he taught languages and gave tennis and boxing lessons. 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

1245-570: 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. He later called it "the first little throb of Lolita ." In May 1940,

1328-418: A son thoughtful and loving before dying young. An edition illustrated by George du Maurier followed in 1873. Writing to Charles L. Dodgson ( Lewis Carroll ) about that time, du Maurier remarked, "Miss Florence Montgomery is a very charming and sympathetic young lady, the daughter of the admiral of that ilk. I am, like you, a very great admirer of 'Misunderstood,' and cried buckets over it." Seaforth (1878)

1411-911: A start-of-year adjustment works well with little confusion for events before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar. For example, the Battle of Agincourt is well known to have been fought on 25 October 1415, which is Saint Crispin's Day . However, for the period between the first introduction of the Gregorian calendar on 15 October 1582 and its introduction in Britain on 14 September 1752, there can be considerable confusion between events in Continental Western Europe and in British domains. Events in Continental Western Europe are usually reported in English-language histories by using

1494-676: A student at Cornell in the 1950s, Thomas Pynchon attended several of Nabokov's lectures and alluded to Lolita in chapter six of his novel The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), in which Serge, countertenor in the band the Paranoids, sings: Pynchon's prose style was influenced by Nabokov's preference for actualism over realism. Of the authors who came to prominence during Nabokov's life, John Banville , Don DeLillo , Salman Rushdie , and Edmund White were all influenced by him. The novelist John Hawkes took inspiration from Nabokov and considered himself his follower. Nabokov's story "Signs and Symbols"

1577-507: A supporter of constitutional monarchy who first awakened Rand's interest in politics. 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",

1660-470: 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. Later, in

1743-481: Is 9 February 1649, the date by which his contemporaries in some parts of continental Europe would have recorded his execution. The O.S./N.S. designation is particularly relevant for dates which fall between the start of the "historical year" (1 January) and the legal start date, where different. This was 25 March in England, Wales, Ireland and the colonies until 1752, and until 1600 in Scotland. In Britain, 1 January

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1826-406: Is a full-length novel for adults. Almost all her works are pious in tone and set in fashionable society. They continued to sell into the 20th century, but by the end of that century they appear to have lost their appeal. One reference book of 1990 comments that "her later works, such as Seaforth , 1878, and Colonel Norton , 1895, have vapid plots and characters." Charlotte Mitchell, in her entry for

1909-483: Is considered one of the greatest works of 20th-century literature. 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. Nabokov was a seven-time finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction . He also

1992-480: Is disdained and frequently mocked in his works. Nabokov's creative processes involved writing sections of text on hundreds of index cards , which he expanded into paragraphs and chapters and rearranged to form the structure of his novels, a process that many screenwriters later adopted. Nabokov published under the pseudonym Vladimir Sirin in the 1920s to 1940s, occasionally to mask his identity from critics. He also makes cameo appearances in some of his novels, such as

2075-408: Is famous in part for its acrostic final paragraph, in which the first letters of each word spell out a message from beyond the grave. Another of his short stories, " Signs and Symbols ", features a character suffering from an imaginary illness called "Referential Mania", in which the affected perceives a world of environmental objects exchanging coded messages. Nabokov's stature as a literary critic

2158-420: 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 tetrameters had been a part of Russian literature for a fairly short two centuries, they were clearly understood by

2241-539: 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 , 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

2324-519: 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." 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 . Poshlost , or as he transcribed it, poshlust ,

2407-518: The October Revolution one year later; this was the only house he ever owned. 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

2490-528: The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , notes "an undercurrent of animosity against the modern young woman... for example Lady Jane Marton in Tony: a Sketch (1898), a hard, selfish, bicycling creature..." Vladimir Nabokov , on the other hand, recalls in his memoir Speak Memory that Misunderstood was the first English book his mother read to him, and "the fate of its hero Humphrey used to bring

2573-609: The Russian Empire and the very beginning of Soviet Russia . For example, in the article "The October (November) Revolution", the Encyclopædia Britannica uses the format of "25 October (7 November, New Style)" to describe the date of the start of the revolution. The Latin equivalents, which are used in many languages, are, on the one hand, stili veteris (genitive) or stilo vetere (ablative), abbreviated st.v. , and meaning "(of/in) old style" ; and, on

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2656-545: The University of Cambridge , one of the world's most prestigious universities, where he attended Trinity College and studied zoology and later 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

2739-474: The "books that, I thought, changed my life when I read them", 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". T. Coraghessan Boyle has said that "Nabokov's playfulness and the ravishing beauty of his prose are ongoing influences" on his writing. Bilingual author and critic Maxim D. Shrayer , who came to

2822-486: The 19th century, a practice that the author Karen Bellenir considered to reveal a deep emotional resistance to calendar reform. Florence Montgomery She was born Florence Harriet Montgomery in Chelsea , London , on 17 January 1843, the second of the seven surviving children of Admiral Alexander Leslie Montgomery (1807–1888) and his wife Caroline Rose Campbell (1818–1909) of Hampton Court , Middlesex . Her father

2905-539: The 4th century , had drifted from reality . The Gregorian calendar reform also dealt with the accumulated difference between these figures, between the years 325 and 1582, by skipping 10 days to set the ecclesiastical date of the equinox to be 21 March, the median date of its occurrence at the time of the First Council of Nicea in 325. Countries that adopted the Gregorian calendar after 1699 needed to skip an additional day for each subsequent new century that

2988-583: The Boyne was commemorated with smaller parades on 1 July. However, both events were combined in the late 18th century, and continue to be celebrated as " The Twelfth ". Because of the differences, British writers and their correspondents often employed two dates, a practice called dual dating , more or less automatically. Letters concerning diplomacy and international trade thus sometimes bore both Julian and Gregorian dates to prevent confusion. For example, Sir William Boswell wrote to Sir John Coke from The Hague

3071-515: The British Isles and colonies converted to the Gregorian calendar, instructed that his tombstone bear his date of birth by using the Julian calendar (notated O.S. for Old Style) and his date of death by using the Gregorian calendar. At Jefferson's birth, the difference was eleven days between the Julian and Gregorian calendars and so his birthday of 2 April in the Julian calendar is 13 April in

3154-410: The British colonies, changed the start of the year from 25 March to 1 January, with effect from "the day after 31 December 1751". (Scotland had already made this aspect of the changes, on 1 January 1600.) The second (in effect ) adopted the Gregorian calendar in place of the Julian calendar. Thus "New Style" can refer to the start-of-year adjustment , to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar , or to

3237-623: The Gregorian calendar. For example, the Battle of Blenheim is always given as 13 August 1704. However, confusion occurs when an event involves both. For example, William III of England arrived at Brixham in England on 5 November (Julian calendar), after he had set sail from the Netherlands on 11 November (Gregorian calendar) 1688. The Battle of the Boyne in Ireland took place a few months later on 1 July 1690 (Julian calendar). That maps to 11 July (Gregorian calendar), conveniently close to

3320-466: The Gregorian calendar. Similarly, George Washington is now officially reported as having been born on 22 February 1732, rather than on 11 February 1731/32 (Julian calendar). The philosopher Jeremy Bentham , born on 4 February 1747/8 (Julian calendar), in later life celebrated his birthday on 15 February. There is some evidence that the calendar change was not easily accepted. Many British people continued to celebrate their holidays "Old Style" well into

3403-430: The Julian and Gregorian dating systems respectively. The need to correct the calendar arose from the realisation that the correct figure for the number of days in a year is not 365.25 (365 days 6 hours) as assumed by the Julian calendar but slightly less (c. 365.242 days). The Julian calendar therefore has too many leap years . The consequence was that the basis for the calculation of the date of Easter , as decided in

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3486-581: The Julian calendar had added since then. When the British Empire did so in 1752, the gap had grown to eleven days; when Russia did so (as its civil calendar ) in 1918, thirteen days needed to be skipped. In the Kingdom of Great Britain and its possessions, the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 introduced two concurrent changes to the calendar. The first, which applied to England, Wales, Ireland and

3569-517: The Julian date of the subsequent (and more decisive) Battle of Aughrim on 12 July 1691 (Julian). The latter battle was commemorated annually throughout the 18th century on 12 July, following the usual historical convention of commemorating events of that period within Great Britain and Ireland by mapping the Julian date directly onto the modern Gregorian calendar date (as happens, for example, with Guy Fawkes Night on 5 November). The Battle of

3652-836: The Nabokovs fled the advancing German troops, reaching the United States via the SS Champlain . Nabokov's brother Sergei did not leave France, and he died at the Neuengamme concentration camp on 9 January 1945. The Nabokovs settled in Manhattan , and Vladimir began volunteer work as an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History . 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

3735-489: The Russian prosodists. On the other hand, he viewed the much older English iambic tetrameters as muddled and poorly documented. In his own words: 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

3818-479: 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." 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." More recently, in connection with the publication of Shrayer's literary memoir Immigrant Baggage ,

3901-536: The United States, where he began writing in English. Nabokov became an American 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 . His 1955 novel Lolita ranked fourth on Modern Library 's list of the 100 best 20th-century novels in 2007 and

3984-587: 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. At the same time he was the de facto curator of lepidoptery at Harvard University 's Museum of Comparative Zoology . 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

4067-598: The author stored his collection of male blue butterfly genitalia. "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

4150-454: The best-humored woman he had ever known. In June 1953, Nabokov and his family went to Ashland, Oregon . There he finished Lolita and began writing the 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 . After

4233-401: 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

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4316-623: 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. He gained both fame and notoriety with Lolita (1955), which recounts

4399-492: The combination of the two. It was through their use in the Calendar Act that the notations "Old Style" and "New Style" came into common usage. When recording British history, it is usual to quote the date as originally recorded at the time of the event, but with the year number adjusted to start on 1 January. The latter adjustment may be needed because the start of the civil calendar year had not always been 1 January and

4482-525: The critic and Stanley Kubrick biographer David Mikics wrote, "Shrayer writes like Nabokov's long lost cousin." Nabokov appears in W. G. Sebald 's 1993 novel The Emigrants . A crater on the planet Mercury was named after Nabokov in 2012. The song cycle "Sing, Poetry" on the 2011 contemporary classical album Troika comprises settings of Russian and English versions of three of Nabokov's poems by such composers as Jay Greenberg , Michael Schelle and Lev Zhurbin . Nabokov's interest in entomology

4565-543: The end of the following December, 1661/62 , a form of dual dating to indicate that in the following twelve weeks or so, the year was 1661 Old Style but 1662 New Style. Some more modern sources, often more academic ones (e.g. the History of Parliament ) also use the 1661/62 style for the period between 1 January and 24 March for years before the introduction of the New Style calendar in England. The Gregorian calendar

4648-830: 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. 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." The 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 . While

4731-501: 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. Nabokov's lectures at Cornell University , as collected in Lectures on Literature , reveal his controversial ideas concerning art. He firmly believed that novels should not aim to teach and that readers should not merely empathize with characters but that

4814-669: The great financial success of Lolita , Nabokov returned to Europe and devoted himself to writing. In 1961, he and Véra moved to the Montreux Palace Hotel in Montreux , Switzerland, where he remained until the end of his life. From his sixth-floor quarters, he conducted his business and took tours to the Alps, Corsica, and Sicily to hunt butterflies. Nabokov died of bronchitis on 2 July 1977 in Montreux. His remains were cremated and buried at Clarens cemetery in Montreux. At

4897-493: 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." 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. In May 1923, he met Véra Evseyevna Slonim ,

4980-512: The novel. In 2010, Kitsch magazine, a student publication at Cornell, published a piece that focused on student reflections on his lectures and also explored Nabokov's long relationship with Playboy . 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. As Edward Jay Epstein described his experience in Nabokov's classes, Nabokov made it clear from

5063-456: The other, stili novi or stilo novo , abbreviated st.n. and meaning "(of/in) new style". The Latin abbreviations may be capitalised differently by different users, e.g., St.n. or St.N. for stili novi . There are equivalents for these terms in other languages as well, such as the German a.St. (" alter Stil " for O.S.). Usually, the mapping of New Style dates onto Old Style dates with

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5146-613: 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." After the 1917 February Revolution , Nabokov's father became a secretary of the Russian Provisional Government in Saint Petersburg . After the October Revolution , the family fled the city for Crimea, at first not expecting to be away for very long. They lived at

5229-537: 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." The Harvard Museum of Natural History , which now contains the Museum of Comparative Zoology , still possesses Nabokov's "genitalia cabinet", where

5312-588: 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." In 1920, Nabokov's family moved to Berlin, where his father set up the émigré newspaper Rul' ("Rudder"). Nabokov followed them to 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

5395-593: 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). In 1967, Nabokov commented: "The pleasures and rewards of literary inspiration are nothing beside

5478-644: The start of a new year from 25 March ( Lady Day , the Feast of the Annunciation ) to 1 January, a change which Scotland had made in 1600. The second discarded the Julian calendar in favour of the Gregorian calendar, skipping 11 days in the month of September to do so. To accommodate the two calendar changes, writers used dual dating to identify a given day by giving its date according to both styles of dating. For countries such as Russia where no start-of-year adjustment took place, O.S. and N.S. simply indicate

5561-431: 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 executorship , ignored Nabokov's request to burn the incomplete manuscript and published it in 2009. 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

5644-596: Was Russia's Justice Minister during the reign of Alexander II . His paternal grandmother was the Baltic German Baroness Maria von Korff. Through his father, he was a descendant of the composer Carl Heinrich Graun . Vladimir was the family's eldest and favorite child. He had four younger siblings: 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

5727-522: Was a boon to him during his permanent exile, providing a theme that runs from his first book, Mary , to later works such as Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle . While the family was nominally Orthodox , it had little religious fervor. Vladimir was not forced to attend church after he lost interest. In 1916, Nabokov inherited the estate Rozhdestveno , next to Vyra, from his uncle Vasily Ivanovich Rukavishnikov ("Uncle Ruka" in Speak, Memory ). He lost it in

5810-644: Was a self-proclaimed " White Russian ", 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 Bolsheviks as "grey rag-tag people". Throughout his life, Nabokov would remain committed to the classical liberal political philosophy of his father, and equally opposed Tsarist autocracy , communism , and fascism . Nabokov's father, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov,

5893-781: 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. Old Style and New Style dates Old Style ( O.S. ) and New Style ( N.S. ) indicate dating systems before and after a calendar change, respectively. Usually, they refer to the change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar as enacted in various European countries between 1582 and 1923. In England , Wales , Ireland and Britain's American colonies , there were two calendar changes, both in 1752. The first adjusted

5976-477: Was also an MP. He succeeded to a baronetcy in 1878. He was a cousin of the novelist Baroness von Tautphoeus (1807–1893). Her cousin, Sibyl Montgomery (died 1935), was the first wife of the Marquess of Queensberry and mother of Lord Alfred Douglas . Florence Montgomery's story-telling abilities were first tried on younger brothers and sisters, but the novelist G. J. Whyte-Melville saw a story of hers printed for

6059-480: Was altered at different times in different countries. From 1155 to 1752, the civil or legal year in England began on 25 March ( Lady Day ); so for example, the execution of Charles I was recorded at the time in Parliament as happening on 30 January 164 8 (Old Style). In newer English-language texts, this date is usually shown as "30 January 164 9 " (New Style). The corresponding date in the Gregorian calendar

6142-526: Was an expert lepidopterist and composer of chess problems . Nabokov was born on 22 April 1899 (10 April 1899 Old Style ) in Saint Petersburg to a wealthy and prominent family of the Russian nobility . His family traced its roots to the 14th-century Tatar prince Nabok Murza , who entered into the service of the Tsars, and from whom the family name is derived. His father was Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov ,

6225-596: Was celebrated as the New Year festival from as early as the 13th century, despite the recorded (civil) year not incrementing until 25 March, but the "year starting 25th March was called the Civil or Legal Year, although the phrase Old Style was more commonly used". To reduce misunderstandings about the date, it was normal even in semi-official documents such as parish registers to place a statutory new-year heading after 24 March (for example "1661") and another heading from

6308-585: Was future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg , who later identified Nabokov as a major influence on her development as a writer. 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

6391-496: Was implemented in Russia on 14 February 1918 by dropping the Julian dates of 1–13 February 1918 , pursuant to a Sovnarkom decree signed 24 January 1918 (Julian) by Vladimir Lenin . The decree required that the Julian date was to be written in parentheses after the Gregorian date, until 1 July 1918. It is common in English-language publications to use the familiar Old Style or New Style terms to discuss events and personalities in other countries, especially with reference to

6474-552: Was inspired by books by Maria Sibylla Merian he found in the attic of his family's country home in Vyra. 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 . His writings in this area were highly technical. This, combined with his specialty in

6557-412: Was marked second-class . His final examination result also ranked second-class, and his BA was conferred in 1922. Nabokov later drew on his Cambridge experiences to write several works, including the novels 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

6640-454: 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. 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. Pulitzer Prize -winning novelist Michael Chabon listed Lolita and Pale Fire among

6723-466: 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

6806-509: 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 , Nabokov recalls numerous details of his privileged childhood. His ability to recall his past in vivid detail

6889-432: 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

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