Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was born on the 22nd of April in 1899 in Imperial Russia, with four younger siblings. His father, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, was a very noble man. He was a journalist, a lawyer, salesman, and also was the leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party in Russia. Sadly, all of these acts of being a highly educated man in Imperial Russia ended with him sadly being assassinated later in Nabokov’s life, and although Vladimir says this has not truly affected him or his writing, a common theme of assassins can be seen throughout many of his novels. While his mother, Yelena Ivanovna née Rukavishnikova, was the granddaughter of a wealthy goldminer, Vladimir was the parents' favorite child. He spent his childhood growing up in St. Petersburg, he grew up speaking English, French, and Russian. His childhood was spent mostly studying and partaking in the usual childhood activities, like playing with his siblings and dealing with the imperial rule of a corrupt government. His first experience at publishing was at 17 publishing a collection of poems correctly named Stikhi, Which is Poems in Russian. This led him to being mocked by his literary teacher due to him believing he was simply not good enough to be a published author. Although his teacher's words hurt him deeply and made him want to stop writing for a short amount of time, he, obviously, did not completely stop writing and went onto his life and he, of course, went on to spend the rest of his life writing his novels for all to enjoy. His first ten novels were written entirely in Russian and the next ten were all published in English.

Due to rising tensions in Europe due to various political conflicts, his family went all over the European union before landing and staying briefly in Britain. Vladimir started to attend the University of Cambridge originally studying zoology, too, which he was rather passionate about, even writing a few books about it, before later changing his major to Russian and other romance languages like that. He used his experience in Cambridge to help write his novels The Real Life of Sebastian Knight and Glory. After a while his family, as all sane people do, got sick of Britain and ran off to Berlin life was going well until the unfortunate assassination of Vladimir's father, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, due to his political actions in life, as mentioned before this greatly affected his writing and engrossed him into a common theme of assassination in his later works. In 1923 Vladimir met his soon-to-be wife,Véra Evseyevna Slonim, and shortly after this marriage would lead to the birth of Vladimir's son, Dmitri Vladimirovich Nabokov, Due to rising Nazi beliefs and Vladimir's wife being Jewish they soon had to flee life in Berlin, leaving for France. While living in France he wrote a short 55 page novella before his family eventually packed up and left for a greater life in America where he eventually began to teach at Cornell University for a short time. Due to one of his most well known novels, Lolita, success he was able to devote the rest of his life entirely to writing, picking up his entire family and move to Switzerland, him and his family stayed in a hotel until his eventual death.

    As mentioned before, Vladimir's first experience with publishing was just at the age of 17, when he published 68 different poems. Public reception of his first book was actually quite negative, with his literary teacher commenting to his father that he shouldn't let his son be a writer due to how the poems were written extremely poorly. Although this greatly upset Nabokov, he continued to write anyway. Many of his circumstances from his earlier years in life can be reflected through his writing. A common theme of assassination from his father's death, the dark writings of child abuse from the abuse he suffered from his uncle in his childhood, and a consistent theme of flowery romantic language used in almost all of his books stemming from his studies of romantic languages back in his days in Cambridge. You can also see his individualistic, sociopolitical belief that one's life should center around oneself instead of the surrounding others. These beliefs shine through in most of his writing, seeing how different characters often only care for the wants, needs, thoughts, and goals that they want rather than the wants or needs of others around them. His writing has often been criticized for his takes on dark topics, but that never stopped his love for the craft, and he always continued to write even through harsh criticism from his peers. He would often reply to the critics who had been mocking him for his writing by calling them nitwits in their own right for not understanding the meaning behind his words.