Nabokov's Butterfly

Aside from being known as a writer, Nabokov is also a collector and researcher of butterflies of published writings.

In 1975, while collecting butterfly specimen in Davos, he slipped into a valley. His health significantly degraded in the next 18 months and died in 1977.

In his later years he had remarked that, if not because the Russian Revolution, he would have been a professional lepidopterist, and would not have written a single novel. Born in an aristocratic family in St.Petersburg, Nabokov's father was a progressive statesman during the last years of the Russian Empire; one of the founding members of Constitutional Democratic Party; and a advocate for Jewish rights in the Russian Empire. After the Bolshevik Revolution, his family fled Russia to seek refugee. During this time Nabokov was enrolled as a student in England studying zoology.