Biographies on the 'Net

I thought it might be interesting to do a quick little internet search to find some biographies of our author. And I found something interesting. First I did a search for Faber pencils, because Nabokov writes about a four foot long one received while he was sick as a child. What I really wanted to find was a picture of the gigantic art instrument, but what came up was this: In Search of Memory Interestingly, the author of this work claims that Nabokov himself was the chronophobiac. In support of his theory, the author sites passages from Speak, Memory, rather than a third party source. So, I was interested to see how prevalent it was for biographers to refer to Speak, Memory when writing about Nabokov's life. My next Google search brought up An Absence Of Wood Nymphs, an article written for The September 14, 1959 issue of "Sports Illustrated". This is an article about Nabokov's many excursions for butterfly hunting. Again, however, the author chose to snip excerpts from Speak, Memory, rather than trying for outside sources to corroborate the authenticity of the autobiography. I'm not sure what this means, perhaps it's because he is held in such high regard as an author that it would be foolish to question is personal work, I'm not sure.

And who were Vladimir Nabokov's parents? From his autobiography, I can tell that his father was deeply involved in politics, but were they nobility or such also? He writes about playing with the family treasures; jewelry of tiaras, chokers, and rings; which would lead me to believe they were wealthy, and says that the local peasants refer to his father as "barin" which is a type of land owner, but also royalty? Are tiaras a common household item for the rich?