Birth of Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov was born on 10 April 1899 in Saint Petersburg. A Russian-American novelist born in Saint Petersburg, Nabokov left Russia with his family after the Revolution, studied at Cambridge and lived in Berlin and Paris, writing in Russian under the name Sirin. He moved to the United States in 1940, began writing in English, and taught literature at Cornell University. His novel Lolita, published in 1955, was both controversial and a bestseller and brought him financial independence, and other major works include Pnin, Pale Fire and the memoir Speak, Memory. He was also a serious lepidopterist who studied butterflies. He lived his last years in a hotel in Montreux, Switzerland.

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