Vladimir Nabokov, his wife Véra, and son Dmitri arrived in Ithaca on July 1, 1948. Nabokov began his duties as Professor of Russian Literature in the fall, teaching three courses on the subject, one in translation and two in Russian. By the end of his more than ten years at Cornell, he would become famous as the author of Lolita and Pnin and known on campus as a lecturer not to be missed.

While at Cornell, Nabokov wrote some of the richest and most enduring works of his career. In 1953 alone he had five writing projects in process. He was well into a translation of The Song of Igor's Campaign, a monumental translation of Eugene Onegin, and a translation of his Conclusive Evidence into Russian. At the same time, the outline for Pnin was taking shape, and Lolita was an all but completed typescript.

When Nabokov left Ithaca in February of 1959, he planned to return to his teaching position at Cornell after a year long sabbatical. But as profits from Lolita continued to multiply, he realized the full scope of the financial freedom won by his new success. For the first time in his life, at age sixty, Nabokov could afford to devote himself wholly to his art. In September of 1959 he wrote to Cornell University president Deane Malott to formally tender his resignation.

The Nabokovs returned to Europe and established residence in Montreux, Switzerland. Although they thought of visiting Ithaca more than once over the following decade, they would never see Cornell again.

By all accounts, Nabokov was an inspiring teacher. Provocative, tough, and highhanded, he sought to inspire his students with a love of literature and a keen appreciation of the art of writing. He wrote his lectures word for word, complete with anecdotes and humorous asides. He acted for his audience, rehearsing, for example, Gogol's death agonies by sinking slowly behind his lectern. He was a demanding examiner, forcing his students to read carefully and often stumping them with questions such as (on Madame Bovary): "Describe Emma's eyes, hands, sunshade, hairdo, dress, shoes." Or (on Anna Karenina), "Describe the wallpaper in Karenin's bedroom."

A yearly highlight was Nabokov's lecture on Poshlost, or philistinism, which drew crowds of spectators. This lecture was designed to warn students against philistine vulgarity, small mindedness, and the enemies of art: banality, conformity, and cliché. In an interview for Playboy in 1964, Nabokov summarized his feelings about teaching at Cornell:

"I loved Cornell. I loved composing and delivering my lectures on Russian writers and European great books. But around sixty, and especially in winter, one begins to find hard the physical process of teaching ..."

While at Cornell, Nabokov taught Literature 311-312, Masters of European Literature, and Literature 325-326, Russian Literature in Translation. By the time he resigned in 1959, enrollment in Literature 311-12 had doubled to 400 from the time he began teaching it. The course was dubbed "dirty lit" on campus, due to its coverage of such novels as Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary.

In Ithaca, the Nabokovs followed the pattern they had established over the previous twenty years by refusing to put down roots and buy a home. They opted instead for permanent transience, renting one professorial sabbatical home after another.

Morris Bishop, Nabokov's good friend and Chairman of the Department of Romance Languages, recalled that the lives led by Vladimir and Véra were quite different from those of most Cornell faculty because "the Nabokovs, twice fugitives into exile, had no accumulations. Thus they were forced to camp in the homes of faculty members away on sabbaticals and grants. Every year, often every term, they would move."

The Nabokovs arrived in Ithaca on July 1, 1948. They moved into 957 East State Street, the home of a vacationing faculty member, where they remained only until the end of the summer. Five years later, in the late summer of 1953, they would return once again to 957 East State Street. It was here that Nabokov finished Lolita in December of 1953.