Vladimir, the eldest child in a prominent family in the Russian nobility, was educated by private tutors in English, French and Russian, and spent his summers at the family’s country estate, Vyra. It was here that five year-old Vladimir caught a lovely yellow, blue, and black swallowtail in his cap. This was the event that first piqued his interest in butterfly collecting. Later, in the attic storerooms of Vyra, Vladimir was further inspired by illustrated books of Lepidoptera such as the beautiful volumes of Mémoires sur les lépidoptères showcased in the No Mere Curios section of this online exhibit.

Young Vladimir excitedly thought himself to have identified a new subspecies of the Poplar Admiral near Vyra, and wrote to Nikolai Kuznetsov, the great Russian entomologist, who gruffly informed him it had already been identified just a few years prior.

The Nabokov family flees St. Petersburg for Crimea

The bulk of the Nabokov family settle in Berlin while Vladimir and his brother Sergei attend Cambridge University. This first year Vladimir studies zoology, before switching to study Slavic and Romance Literature.

Nabokov’s first scientific paper, on Crimean Lepidoptera, is published. This is also his first publication in the English language.

On March 28 Nabokov’s father is killed in Berlin by right-wing Tsarist sympathizers who were attempting to assassinate another man. Vladimir earns his B.A. degree in Russian and French Literature from Cambridge in the UK.

Nabokov marries Véra Slonim. With their marriage, Véra ended her own budding career as a writer and instead shifted her energies to supporting her husband as his business manager, agent, critic, reader, and typist, helping him with his lectures, and often managing his correspondence. Once the family was living in the United States, she also added "chauffeur" to her many roles , driving thousands of miles on butterfly expeditions as Vladimir himself never learned to drive.

Nabokov writes his first nine novels, all in Russian.

After a pause of over ten years, the advance for the German translation of King, Queen, Knave enables Vladimir and Véra to enjoy a long butterfly collecting trip in the French Pyrenees from February through June.

Nabokov’s second scientific paper, this one on butterflies of the Pyrenees, is published.

Vladimir and Véra’s son Dimitri is born

Vladimir, Véra and Dimitri leave Berlin for France

Nabokov catches two specimens of a butterfly he believes may be a new species while collecting in the French Maritime Alps. He later writes his poem “On Discovering a Butterfly” about this.

Vladimir, Véra and Dimitri flee France for America on the last ship out before Paris falls to the Nazis.

Nabokov volunteers with the entomology collection at the American Museum of Natural History.

Nabokov catches what he believes is a new species of satyr butterfly in the Grand Canyon. It is later determined to be a subspecies

Nabokov identifies the Karner Blue as a distinct subspecies of the Melissa Blue and calls it Lycaeides melissa samuelis. He later elevates it to its own species: Lycaeides samuelis, now known as Plebejus samuelis.

Nabokov is a Research Fellow and Curator of Lepidoptera in Harvard University’s Comparative Zoology department where he pursues taxonomic research and refines his classification theory regarding the Blues. He is so devoted to his investigations with the microscope that he reports to have damaged his vision. This time at Harvard was his first, and only, employment as a professional lepidopterist. During his lifetime, only a handful of researchers gave credit to Nabokov’s scientific theories, but in 2011 applications of DNA sequencing technology to Nabokov’s hypothesis on the Polyommatus Blues proved it to be correct.

While writing and teaching literature, first at Wellesley, and then from fall of 1948 at Cornell, Nabokov is also publishing many articles in entomological journals, some of them seminal to the field.

Nabokov joins the faculty at Cornell as Associate Professor and Chair of the Russian Department. When summer break begins each year, the Nabokovs load up their car, and Véra, the only one of them with a driver’s license, drives them thousands of miles to collect butterflies primarily in the west. On such a trip in the summer of 1948 Vladimir starts the first draft of Lolita, the book that will ultimately bring him fame, fortune, and controversy, on the back of his entomology index cards.

On June 2, while driving from Boston to Ithaca, Nabokov visits the Albany Pine Bush for the first time and has no trouble finding a Karner Blue in the wild. While plentiful at this time, Karner Blues are now an endangered species.

Pnin is published. In the book Nabokov describes a score of Karner Blues but does not name them.

Lolita is published in the US, and becomes a commercial success.

Vladimir and Véra enjoy a long butterfly collecting trip from the Great Smokies to California.

The Nabokovs move in to the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland, which remains their home for the rest of their lives. The surrounding landscape provides a great setting for butterfly hunting.

Pale Fire published. It includes reference to the Toothwort White (now commonly known as the West Virginia White), the Red Admiral, and Victorian butterfly expert William Henry Edwards.

Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle is published. The character Ada wants to be a lepidopterist.

Vladimir Nabokov dies in Switzerland.