Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel Lolita was published in the United States on this day in 1958. (It appeared a year later in the UK having been banned up to then). Unsurprisingly, given its theme, the book courted controversy from the very moment it was published (originally in France in 1955) and it was this controversy which prompted Nabokov to include an afterword in the US version of the book where he strongly refuted claims that it was either lewd or anti-American. He also insisted that his detractors based their criticisms not on his treatment of the theme but rather on the theme itself - which, he claimed was completely taboo at the time. Nabokov also said that, despite the fictional John Ray Jr.'s claim made in the Foreword, there is no moral to the story and he added that it was childish to study a work of fiction to gain information about a country, a social class or an author. Frankly, he was having none of it. Indeed in 1962 he told the BBC that Lolita was a special favorite of his. "It was my most difficult book—the book that treated of a theme which was so distant, so remote, from my own emotional life that it gave me a special pleasure to use my combinational talent to make it real." The book is regularly listed in polls of the best novels ever written with a recent Modern Library poll ranking it in 4th place below Ulysses, The Great Gatsby and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Lolita - Nabokov said there was no moral to the story.
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