Lolita Published in America
On this day · 18 August 1958
After a string of nervous publishers said no, Nabokov's scandalous novel hit US shelves and sold faster than almost anything before it.
On August 18, 1958, G. P. Putnam’s Sons released Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita in American bookstores. The novel, narrated by the predatory Humbert Humbert, had first appeared three years earlier in Paris, after major US houses turned it down for fear of obscenity prosecution.
Putnam’s gamble paid off immediately. Lolita went through three printings in its first days and sold roughly 100,000 copies in three weeks — a pace not seen since Gone with the Wind. The book made the previously little-known émigré author famous and, after the sale of film rights, financially secure for life.
A book turned away by every cautious editor became one of the fastest-selling novels in American history.
Controversy followed the success: a month after publication, the Cincinnati Public Library removed the book over its subject matter. Yet Lolita endured, prized for Nabokov’s dazzling prose even as readers wrestled with its disturbing narrator.
Sources & references
3 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 3 independent sources.
