Nabokov finished Lolita on 6 December 1953, five years after starting it.[37] Because of its subject matter, Nabokov intended to publish it pseudonymously (although the anagrammatic character Vivian Darkbloom would tip off the alert reader).[38] The manuscript was turned down, with more or less regret, by Viking, Simon & Schuster, New Directions, Farrar, Straus, and Doubleday.[39] After these refusals and warnings, he finally resorted to publication in France. Via his translator Doussia Ergaz, it reached Maurice Girodias of Olympia Press, "three-quarters of [whose] list was pornographic trash".[40] Underinformed about Olympia, overlooking hints of Girodias's approval of the conduct of a protagonist Girodias presumed was based on the author, and despite warnings from Morris Bishop, his friend at Cornell, Nabokov signed a contract with Olympia Press for publication of the book, to come out under his own name.[41]
Lolita was published in September 1955, as a pair of green paperbacks "swarming with typographical errors".[42] Although the first printing of 5,000 copies sold out, there were no substantial reviews.[43] Eventually, at the very end of 1955, Graham Greene, in the London Sunday Times, called it one of the three best books of 1955.[44] This statement provoked a response from the London Sunday Express, whose editor John Gordon called it "the filthiest book I have ever read" and "sheer unrestrained pornography".[45] British Customs officers were then instructed by the Home Office to seize all copies entering the United Kingdom.[46] In December 1956, France followed suit, and the Minister of the Interior banned Lolita;[47] the ban lasted for two years. Its eventual British publication by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in London in 1959 was controversial enough to contribute to the end of the political career of the Conservative member of parliament Nigel Nicolson, one of the company's partners.[48]
The novel then appeared in Danish and Dutch translations. Two editions of a Swedish translation were withdrawn at the author's request.[49][50]
Despite initial trepidation, there was no official response in the U.S., and the first American edition was issued by G. P. Putnam's Sons in August 1958. The book was into a third printing within days and became the first since Gone with the Wind to sell 100,000 copies in its first three weeks.[51] Orville Prescott, the influential book reviewer of the New York Times, greatly disliked the book, describing it as "dull, dull, dull in a pretentious, florid and archly fatuous fashion".[52] This review failed to influence the book's sales.
Lolita was later translated into Russian by Nabokov himself and published in New York City in 1967 by Phaedra Publishers.[53]
Present-day views
The novel continues to generate controversy today as modern society has become increasingly aware of the lasting damage created by child sexual abuse. In 2008, an entire book, Approaches to teaching Nabokov's Lolita, was published on the best ways to teach the novel in a college classroom given that "its particular mix of narrative strategies, ornate allusive prose, and troublesome subject matter complicates its presentation to students".[54] In this book, one author urges teachers to note that Dolores' suffering is noted in the book even if the main focus is on Humbert.
Many critics describe Humbert as a rapist, notably Azar Nafisi in her best-selling Reading Lolita in Tehran,[55] though in a survey of critics Elizabeth Patnoe notes that other interpreters of the novel have been reluctant to use that term,[56]: 133 despite Patnoe's observation that Humbert's actions "can only be interpreted as rape".[56]: 115 Patnoe finds that many critics "sympathetically incorporate Humbert's language into their own", or believe Lolita seduces Humbert while emphasizing Humbert's responsibility. Of those who claim that Humbert rapes Lolita, Patnoe finds that many "go on to subvert the claim by confounding love and rape".[56]: 133
Near the end of the novel, Humbert states that had he been his own sentencing judge, he "would have given Humbert at least thirty-five years for rape".[57] Nabokov biographer Brian Boyd denies that it was rape "in any ordinary sense", on the grounds that "it is she who suggests that they try out the naughty trick" which she has already learned at summer camp.[58] This perspective is vigorously disputed by Peter Rabinowitz in his essay "Lolita: Solipsized or Sodomized?".[59] Rabinowitz argues that in seeking metaphorical readings and generalized meaning,[59]: 331–332 academic readers viewing Lolita within the frame of high art[59]: 327 are "standing back from the situation — a posture that leads, in this case, to a blame-the-victim reading by turning this victimized child into a femme fatale, a cruel mistress, a girl without emotions."[59]: 337
In 2020, a podcast hosted by Jamie Loftus set out to examine the cultural legacy of the novel, and argued that depictions and adaptations have "twisted" Nabokov's original intention of condemning Humbert in Lolita.[60][61]
