Editing Vladimir Nabokov (section)

==Early life and education==
===Russia===
[[File:Nabokovs_arms.png|thumb|200px|left|Coat of Arms of the Nabokov family, members of an ancient [[Russian nobility]], granted to them on 1 January 1798 by [[Paul I of Russia|Emperor Paul I]]]]
[[File:Dmitry N. Nabokov.jpeg|thumb|upright=1|Nabokov's grandfather Dmitry Nabokov, who was Justice Minister under [[Alexander II of Russia|Tsar Alexander II]]]]
[[Image:Nabokov1914.jpg|thumb|upright=1|Nabokov's father, [[Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov|V. D. Nabokov]], in his [[World War I]] officer's uniform, 1914]]
[[File:Maison Nabokov.JPG|thumb|upright=1|The Nabokov family mansion in [[Saint Petersburg]]; today it is the site of the [[Nabokov House|Nabokov museum]].]]
[[File:Rozhdestveno.JPG|thumb|upright=1|At age 16, Nabokov inherited the [[Rozhdestveno Memorial Estate|Rozhdestveno estate]] from his maternal uncle; Nabokov owned it for one year before losing it in the [[October Revolution]].]]

Nabokov was born on 22 April 1899 (10 April 1899 [[Adoption of the Gregorian calendar#Adoption in Eastern Europe|Old Style]]) in [[Saint Petersburg]]{{efn|name=note1}} to a wealthy and prominent family of the [[Russian nobility]]. His family traced its roots to the 14th-century [[Tatar people|Tatar]] prince Nabok [[Morza|Murza]], who entered into the service of the Tsars, and from whom the family name is derived.<ref>{{cite book| first= Vladimir Vladimirovich |last= Nabokov| title= Speak, Memory: A Memoir| publisher= Gollancz |year= 1951| page= 37}}</ref><ref name= RussianYears />{{rp|16}}<ref>{{Cite book |first=Barbara |last=Wyllie |year=2010 |title=Vladimir Nabokov |url=https://archive.org/details/vladimirnabokov00barb |location=London |publisher=Reaktion Books |page=[https://archive.org/details/vladimirnabokov00barb/page/n8 7] |isbn=9781861896605 |oclc=671654363}}</ref> His father was [[Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov]], a liberal lawyer, statesman, and journalist, and his mother was the heiress Yelena Ivanovna ''née'' Rukavishnikova, the granddaughter of a millionaire gold-mine owner. His father was a leader of the pre-Revolutionary liberal [[Constitutional Democratic Party]], and wrote numerous books and articles about criminal law and politics.<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia|url=http://www.britannica.com/biography/Vladimir-Nabokov|title=Vladimir Nabokov {{!}} American author| encyclopedia= [[Encyclopædia Britannica]] |access-date=3 May 2016}}</ref> His cousins included the composer [[Nicolas Nabokov]]. His paternal grandfather, Dmitry Nabokov, was Russia's Justice Minister during the reign of [[Alexander II of Russia|Alexander II]]. His paternal grandmother was the [[Baltic Germans|Baltic German]] Baroness Maria von Korff. Through his father, he was a descendant of the composer [[Carl Heinrich Graun]].<ref>{{cite book| first= Vincent |last= Giroud| title= Nicolas Nabokov: A Life in Freedom and Music| publisher= Oxford University Press |year= 2015| page= 2}}</ref>

Vladimir was the family's eldest and favorite child. He had four younger siblings: [[Sergey Nabokov|Sergey]], Olga, Elena, and Kirill. Sergey was killed in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945 after publicly denouncing Hitler's regime. Writer [[Ayn Rand]] recalled Olga (her close friend at Stoiunina Gymnasium) as a supporter of constitutional monarchy who first awakened Rand's interest in politics.<ref>{{Citation | last = Sciabarra | first = Chris Matthew | title = Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical | publisher = Penn State Press | year = 2013 | pages = 66, 367–68}}.</ref><ref>{{Citation | last = Gladstein | first = Mimi Reisel | year = 2009 | title = Ayn Rand | series = Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers | place = New York | publisher = Continuum | isbn = 978-0-8264-4513-1 | page = 2}}.</ref> Elena, who in later years became Vladimir's favorite sibling, published her correspondence with him in 1985. She was an important source for Nabokov's biographers.

Nabokov spent his childhood and youth in Saint Petersburg and at the country estate Vyra near [[Siverskaya]], south of the city. His childhood, which he called "perfect" and "cosmopolitan", was remarkable in several ways. The family spoke Russian, English, and French in their household, and Nabokov was trilingual from an early age. He related that the first English book his mother read to him was ''Misunderstood'', by [[Florence Montgomery]]. Much to his patriotic father's disappointment, Nabokov could read and write in English before he could in Russian. In his memoir ''[[Speak, Memory]]'',<ref>{{cite news |last1=Beam |first1=Alex |title=Confessions of a word snob |work=International Herald Tribune |date=29 April 2013 |  via=Cengage  | id={{Gale|A327843688}}}}</ref> Nabokov recalls numerous details of his privileged childhood. His ability to recall his past in vivid detail was a boon to him during his permanent exile, providing a theme that runs from his first book, ''[[Mary (novel)|Mary]]'', to later works such as ''[[Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle]]''. While the family was nominally [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Orthodox]], it had little religious fervor. Vladimir was not forced to attend church after he lost interest.

In 1916, Nabokov inherited the estate [[Rozhdestveno Memorial Estate|Rozhdestveno]], next to Vyra, from his uncle Vasily Ivanovich Rukavishnikov ("Uncle Ruka" in ''[[Speak, Memory]]''). He lost it in the [[October Revolution]] one year later; this was the only house he ever owned.{{citation needed|date=November 2013}}

Nabokov's adolescence was the period in which he made his first serious literary endeavors. In 1916, he published his first book, ''Stikhi'' (''Poems''), a collection of 68 Russian poems. At the time he was attending Tenishev school in Saint Petersburg, where his literature teacher Vladimir Vasilievich Gippius had criticized his literary accomplishments. Some time after the publication of ''Stikhi'', [[Zinaida Gippius]], renowned poet and first cousin of his teacher, told Nabokov's father at a social event, "Please tell your son that he will never be a writer."<ref>{{cite journal| url= http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/?id=1453| journal= Cycnos| title= Nabokov and Some Poets of Russian Modernism| date= 25 June 2008| volume= NABOKOV : At the Crossroads of Modernism and Postmodernism -| access-date= 5 December 2015| last1= Karlinsky| first1= Simon| archive-date= 8 December 2015| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20151208101339/http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/?id=1453| url-status= dead}}</ref>

After the 1917 [[February Revolution]], Nabokov's father became a secretary of the [[Russian Provisional Government]] in Saint Petersburg.

===October Revolution===
After the [[October Revolution]], the family fled the city for Crimea, at first not expecting to be away for very long. They lived at a friend's estate and in September 1918 moved to [[Livadiya, Crimea|Livadiya]], at the time under the separatist [[Crimean Regional Government]], in which Nabokov's father became a minister of justice.

===University of Cambridge===
After the withdrawal of the [[German Army (German Empire)|German Army]] in November 1918 and the defeat of the [[White Army]] in early 1919, the Nabokovs sought exile in western Europe, along with other Russian refugees. They settled briefly in England, where Nabokov gained admittance to the [[University of Cambridge]], one of the world's most prestigious universities, where he attended [[Trinity College, Cambridge|Trinity College]] and studied [[zoology]] and later [[Slavic languages|Slavic]] and [[Romance languages]]. His examination results on the first part of the [[Tripos]] exam, taken at the end of his second year, were a [[starred first]]. He took the second part of the exam in his fourth year just after his father's death, and feared he might fail it. But his exam was marked [[Second class honours|second-class]]. His final examination result also ranked second-class, and his [[Bachelor of Arts|BA]] was conferred in 1922. Nabokov later drew on his Cambridge experiences to write several works, including the novels ''[[Glory (Nabokov novel)|Glory]]'' and ''[[The Real Life of Sebastian Knight]]''.

At Cambridge, one journalist wrote in 2014, "the coats-of-arms on the windows of his room protected him from the cold and from the melancholy over the recent loss of his country. It was in this city, in his moments of solitude, accompanied by ''King Lear'', ''Le Morte d'Arthur'', ''The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'' or ''Ulysses'', that Nabokov made the firm decision to become a Russian writer."<ref>[https://www.rbth.com/arts/literature/2014/04/22/the-secret-british-life-of-vladimir-nabokov_721698 "The secret British life of Vladimir Nabokov"], ''Russia Beyond'', 22 April 2014.</ref>