Nabokov, Vladimir | “It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.”

Nabokov, Vladimir

Lolita. Paris: the Olympia Press, 1955

2 vols., 12mo. Original printed green wrappers priced at Francs: 900 on both lower wrappers; spines slightly toned and creased, faintest bit of rubbing to spine edges; glue on Volume 1 text block a little dry; small patch of paper residue to rear cover of Volume 2. Green cloth clamshell box.

First edition, first issue of a controversial classic.

At least five American publishers rejected Lolita: Viking, Simon & Schuster, New Directions, Farrar Straus, and Doubleday. It was Maurice Girodias and the Paris-based Olympia Press that finally stepped up and published the work, four years and many court cases before it was issued by US and UK publishers.

The Partisan Review had agreed to print a portion of it, but only on the condition that Nabokov would sign the work; he refused, having decided that “its subject is such that V., as a college teacher, cannot very well publish it under his real name. Especially, since the book is written in the first person, and the ‘general’ reader has the unfortunate inclination to identify the invented ‘I’ of the story with its author.” He added, parenthetically, “This is, perhaps, particularly true of the American ‘general’ reader.”

All the while Nabokov defended his work to friends and publishers. He wrote to Morris Bishop: "I know that Lolita is my best book so far. I calmly lean on my conviction that it is a serious work of art, and that no court could prove it to be ‘lewd and libertine.’ All categories grade, of course, into one another: a comedy of manners written by a fine poet may have its ‘lewd’ side; but ‘Lolita’ is a tragedy. ‘Pornography’ is not an image plucked out of context; pornography is an attitude and an intention. The tragic and the obscene exclude each other" (March 6, 1956, SL p. 184).

REFERENCE:

Juliar A28.1.1

PROVENANCE:

Anita Coop (bookplate with signature of Anita Coop to fly of both volumes)