Jane Grayson taught Russian literature at the University of St. Andrews and then in the School of Slavonic Studies and East European Studies in University College, London. Her first book, Nabokov Translated: A Comparison of Nabokov's Russian and English Prose (Oxford, 1977), examined Nabokov's auto-translations and clarified for those without Russian how the older Nabokov did or did not modify his work as a younger writer. She organised the 1999 Nabokov centennial conference in Nabokov's alma mater, Cambridge, from which shed edited, with Arnold Macmillan and Priscilla Meyer, the two volumes Nabokov's World (vol. 1: The Shape of Nabokov's World; vol. 2: Reading Nabokov) (Palgrave, 2002). She also wrote Vladimir Nabokov in the Penguin Illustrated Lives series (2001).
