Born in St Petersburg in 1899, Vladimir Nabokov spent most of his life exiled from Russia. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge and lived for a number of years in Berlin, moving to the United States in the 1940s.

He wrote a number of novels in English and in Russian; his first was published in 1926. Nabokov is most well known for his highly controversial novel Lolita, written in the early 1950s and first published in 1955; Lolita was banned in France and censored in the USA and UK until 1958.

Nabokov was also highly acclaimed for his academic teaching and recognized as an authority on butterflies. He died in Switzerland in 1977.

• http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/nabokov.htm
• http://www.libraries.psu.edu/iasweb/nabokov/zembla.htm
• http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/books/1999/nabokov/
  (has links, details of work etc)