title: A Reader's Guide to Nabokov's 'Lolita' (Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures, and History)
author: Julian Connolly
description: "The importance of this book lies in the way it succinctly summarizes critical viewpoints yet provides a fresh and accessible interpretation of the novel [Connolly] never claims to give a definitive reading of the book, only to try to help readers "grasp the full complexity and sweep of Nabokov's unique creation" (p.1), which he admirably achieves." (Jason Merrill, Michigan State University <i>The Russian Review</i>)
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  Vladimir Nabokov
  
  
  Lolita:
  
  
  A SCREENPLAY
  
  
  Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg on April 23, 1899. His family fled
  to the Crimea in 1917, during the Bolshevik Revolution, then went into exile
  in Europe. Nabokov studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, earning a degree in
  French and Russian literature in 1922, and lived in Berlin and Paris for the
  next two decades, writing prolifically, mainly in Russian, under the pseudonym
  Sirin. In 1940 he moved to the United States, where he pursued a brilliant
  literary career (as a poet, novelist, memoirist, critic, and translator) while
  teaching Russian, creative writing, and literature at Stanford, Wellesley,
  Cornell, and Harvard. The monumental success of his novel Lolita
  
  
  (1955) enabled him to give up teaching and devote himself fully to his
  writing. In 1961 he moved to Montreux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977.
  Recognized as one of the master prose stylists of the century in both Russian
  and Englis