In 1966 Vladimir Nabokov responded to an interviewer's comment about his present fame with the remark, “Lolita is famous, not I. I am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable name.” Since that time, the reputations of both the novel and the man have increased in stature; it would be unlikely that the writer could make the same claim today. A 1998 poll of the editorial board of the Modern Library (a division of Random House) found Lolita in fourth place on a list of the greatest English-language novels of the twentieth century; a second Nabokov novel, Pale Fire, was placed fifty-third. Numerous contemporary writers, including John Updike, John Barth, Edward Albee, Edmund White, Donald Harington, David Slavitt, W. G. Sebald, Sasha Sokolov, Yury Trifonov, Vasily Aksenov, and Andrei Bitov have paid homage to Nabokov directly or indirectly in their work. The publication of major editions of Nabokov's work is underway in Germany and France, and Nabokov's English-language novels have been included in the “Library of America” series in the United States. In addition, Nabokov's artistic legacy has become the subject of an enormous and vital critical industry. Brian Boyd's monumental two-volume critical biography (1990–91) reflects a degree of popular interest that has few parallels for Russian-born writers. Articles and monographs on his art are appearing across the globe in a multitude of languages, from Croatian to Japanese, and an electronic discussion group, NABOKV-L, recently listed nearly 500 subscribers from over thirty countries.

The distinctiveness of Nabokov's artistic reputation can be gauged by comparing it with the critical attention paid to some other writers who, like Nabokov, were born in Russia during the 1890s.