Facts about Vladimir Nabokov

1. 16

   Nabokov's 1899 birth in Saint Petersburg and 1977 death in Montreux, Switzerland spanned 78 years across three continents and four distinct literary careers in Russian, English, and French.

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2. 15

   Nabokov's 1957 novel Pnin depicts a Russian-American professor navigating Cold War academia, drawing from his own experiences as an émigré instructor at American universities during the 1940s and 1950s.

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3. 14

   Nabokov's annotated copy of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, published in 1964, contained over 3,000 detailed footnotes spanning 4 volumes and took him 15 years to complete.

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4. 13

   Nabokov's 1962 screenplay adaptation of Lolita, directed by Stanley Kubrick, was nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Adapted Screenplay despite the author's initial reservations about the film.

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5. 12

   Nabokov's precise memory allowed him to compose entire novels mentally during long walks before transcribing them, rarely requiring revisions to his handwritten manuscripts.

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6. 11

   Nabokov's intricate chess problems, composed throughout his life, were featured in major newspapers and literary magazines, with some taking him weeks to construct.

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7. 10

   Nabokov's 1926 debut novel Mary was written in Berlin while he lived in poverty, earning money through giving tennis lessons and translation work.

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8. 09

   In 1977, Cornell University acquired Nabokov's personal archive containing 4,000 annotated index cards documenting his lifelong butterfly collecting expeditions across three continents.

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9. 08

   The manuscript of Nabokov's final novel Look at the Harlequins!, completed in 1974 when he was 75 years old, was published posthumously in 1976.

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10. 07

    Ada or Ardor, Nabokov's 1969 novel, spans 589 pages and is narrated by a protagonist recounting his incestuous relationship across multiple decades and continents.

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11. 06

    Lolita's 1955 publication was rejected by 4 major American publishers before Olympia Press in Paris agreed to print it, fearing obscenity charges.

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12. 05

    During his 1940 emigration to America, Nabokov worked as a comparative literature professor at Cornell University for 14 years while writing Lolita in his spare time.

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13. 04

    Nabokov spent over 50 years compiling an exhaustive index of all butterflies and moths in the Lepidoptera order, resulting in thousands of hand-drawn illustrations and taxonomic notes.

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14. 03

    Lepidopterist Vladimir Nabokov discovered and named several butterfly species during his lifetime, including Nabokovia ridingsii in 1945.

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15. 02

    Nabokov's 1962 novel Pale Fire contains 999 lines of verse embedded within a 300-page narrative, making it structurally unprecedented in literary history.

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16. 01

    Between 1920 and 1940, Vladimir Nabokov published 9 novels in Russian before emigrating and later achieving international fame writing in English.

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