Publishing, the Rules of the Trade

Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov, The Olympia Press, original edition, 1955, Coll. Bfm - Limoges

After several legal battles, Girodias won his case. But the authorities used the law of 1949 to ban all display of the English edition. Gallimard published a French translation of Lolita in 1959. Girodias wanted to take advantage of the worldwide success nourished by the scandal: he claimed damages from the State. The administration gave in and lifted the ban on the English edition, which consequently found a wide readership. According to Maurice Couturier, author of a new translation in 2001, the question of paedophilia, which was of course discussed when the book came out, was not central to its reception: ‘today’s reader is infinitely more embarrassed than the reader of the fifties. That has no effect on the question of the novel’s aesthetic value; on the contrary, it shows that the disturbingly topical and the disturbingly beautiful exist.’