Nabokov, Vladimir

Lolita. Paris: The Olympia Press, 1955

2 𝕴🌃vols., 8vo (178 x 112 mm). Original printed green wrappers, priced 900 francs on rear wrappers, each amended 1800 in blue pen; lightly worn and rubbed. Housed in a green slipcase with folding cloth chemise.

First edition, an exceptional association copy inscribed to Graham Greene: "For Graham Greene | November 1959 | From Vladimir Nabokov." Additionally embellished with one of Nabokov's butterfly drawings, delicately rendered in blue and green, and titled by Nabokov: "green swallowtail dancing waisthi😼gh."

Lolita was far from a literary sensation when it was first published in 1955. Following a grueling five-year period of writing, Nabokov’s manuscript was rejected by at least five major American publishing houses before landing with Maurice Girodias at the Olympia Press in Paris. Girodias, who was somewhat notorious as a publisher of sexually explicit English-language material, agreed to publish the book with an initial print run of 5,000 copies. Upon its publication, Lolita received no significant reviews, and initially sold poorly. Nabokov’s controversial masterpiece went substantially unnoticed until Graham Greene named it one of the three best books of the year in the London Sunday Times, setting𓆏 off a public controversy that would challenge mores around censorship, and greatly enhance Nabokov’s literary standing. 

Greene’s endorsement prompted a vehement rebuttal by the editor-in-chief of the Sunday Express, John Gordon, who responded by calling Lolita: “Without doubt it is the filthiest book I have ever read. Sheer unrestrained pornography… Anyone who published it or sold it here would certainly go to jail” (Sunday Express, 29 January 1956). Greene responded with a tongue-in-cheek notice in the Spectator that he would be establishing the John Gordon Society, “In recognition of the struggle he has maintained for so many years against the insidious menace of pornography, in defence of our hearts and homes and the purity of public life… The main object of the Society will be … to examine and if necessary to condemn all offensive books, plays, films, strip cartoons, musical compositions, paintings, sculptures, and ceramics” (Spectator, 10 February 1956). Participants in the first meeting of the John Gordon Society included Christopher Isherwood, Angus Wilson, A.J. 𒐪Ayer, Peter Brook, and some of the best editors in London. 

As the fracas played out publicly over the ensuing months—Greene even invited Gordon to speak at the second meeting of his joke organization—the novel’s notoriety was growing, and international publishers began to take notice as more and more copies were finding their way into England and the United States. Nabokov wrote to Graham Greene at the close of 1956 to bot😼h thank him for his support, and unburden himself of some of his frustrations: “From various friends I keep receiving heart-warming reports on your kindness to my books … My poor Lo🍸lita is having a rough time. The pity is that if I had made her a boy, or a cow, or a bicycle, Philistines might never have flinched. On the other hand, Olympia Press informs me that amateurs (amateurs!) are disappointed with the tame turn my story takes in the second volume, and do not buy it” (Bruccoli, pp. 197-198). 

The Olympia Press edition was followed by the first American edition, published by G.P. Putnam & Sons, on 18 August 1958 (see the following lot for an exceptional example inscribed to Véra Nabokov), but the British adaptation would prove thornier because of obscenity laws. Greene advocated for The Bodley Head—and was prepared to sign the contract on their behalf, thus making himself a direct target if the publication resulted in prosecution—but to Greene’s great disappointment the contract went to Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Lolita was finally published in England in November 1959 after the passage of a more liberal obscenity bill, which insisted that a work should be judged as a whole, and on its literary merits, not merely on the basis of potentially objectionable passages read out of context. The censorship campaign acted as a powerful publicity tool, and Lolita became a run-away bestseller in both countries.

The first edition of Nabokov’s masterpiece, inscribed on the occasion of the publication of the British edition, to the man who was willing to go to jail for Lolita.

REFERENCE:

Juliar A28.1.1; Selected Letters 1940-1977, ed. Bruccoli; Norman Sherry, The Life of Graham Greene, Volume III, Penguin Books, 2004 

PROVENANCE:

Graham Greene (presentation inscription) — Bernie Taupin (see: Rick Gekoski, Nabokov’s Butterfly, Carroll & Graf, 2004🗹) — Ro𝕴ger Rechler (his sale, Christie's New York, 11 October 2002, lot 368, achieved $273,500)