Vladimir Nabokov taught at Cornell University from 1948 to 1959. It was at Cornell that Nabokov composed Lolita and Pnin and conceived Pale Fire. During his Cornell tenure Nabokov also continued his research on lepidoptera, wrote the English and Russian versions of his autobiography, Conclusive Evidence, and Drugie Berega, and prepared annotated translations of two pinnacles of Russian literature: The Song of Igor's Campaign and Eugene Onegin. While at Cornell, Nabokov also delivered his highly acclaimed lectures on Russian and West European literature.

Nabokov at Cornell contains twenty-five chapters by the leading experts on Nabokov. Their subjects range widely from Nabokov's poetry to his prose, from his original fiction to translation and literary scholarship, from literature to visual art, and from the humanities to natural science. The book concludes with a reminiscence of the family's life in Ithaca by Nabokov's son, Dmitri.

Contributors: Vladimir E. Alexandrov, Yale University; Stephen H. Blackwell, University of Tennessee; Brian Boyd, University of Aukland; Clarence F. Brown, Princeton University; Julian W. Connolly, University of Virginia; Sergei Davydov, Middlebury College; Nina Demurova, University of Russian Academy of Education; Robert Dirig, Cornell University; John Burt Foster, Jr., George Mason University; D. Barton Johnson, UC Santa Barbara; Marina Kanevskaya, University of Montana; John M. Kopper, Dartmouth College; Zoran Kuzmanovich, Davidson College; Dmitri Nabokov; Charles Nicol, Indiana State University; Stephen Jan Parker, University of Kansas; Ellen Pifer, University of Delaware; Irena Ronen, University of Michigan; Omry Ronen, University of Michigan; Christine A. Rydel, Grand Valley State University; Gavriel Shapiro, Cornell University; Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, College of the Holy Cross; Leona Toker, Hebrew University; Joanna Maria Trzeciak, University of ChicagoLisa Zunshine, University of Kentucky