Nabokov joined the faculty at Cornell University in July of 1948 as Associate Professor and Chair of the Russian Department. He would remain until February of 1959 when he first took a leave of absence, only to a few months later officially resign his position and move back to Europe, eventually settling in Montreux, Switzerland.

Prior to his move to Cornell, while Nabokov was still the de-facto Curator of Lepidoptera in Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ), Nabokov developed a friendly professional acquaintance with both John G. Franclemont and William T.M. Forbes in the Entomology Department at Cornell. Their correspondences, some of which are preserved in the Rare and Manuscript Collection (RMC) of Cornell University Library, show that Nabokov was borrowing specimens from Cornell for his work at the MCZ.

In February of 1948 Nabokov wrote to Forbes that he has “great pleasure in informing [Forbes] that I am joining your Faculty” and asking if “it would be possible for [Nabokov] to go on with [his] lepidop. [sic] research work at the Agric. Exper. [sic] station?” Forbes replies: “Glad to hear you are to be with us...we will certainly be able to find you an alcove in the collection room...”

During the decade the Nabokovs spent in Ithaca they never owned a house, choosing instead to rent a series of houses, usually ones for rent during a fellow Cornell professor's sabbatical. Thereby they rarely stayed in one house for more than a semester or an academic year.

Almost every summer during this era the Nabokovs would load up their car, and Véra, the only one of them to have a driver’s license, would drive them thousands of miles to collect butterflies, primarily in the American west. On such a trip in the summer of 1948 Vladimir started the first draft of Lolita, the book that ultimately brought him fame, fortune, and controversy, writing as he always did on entomology index cards. Some place descriptions in the novel are based on the motels and locations they visited on these trips.