The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel That Scandalized the World

^Twenty-Six Writing and Publishing Lolita

On December 6, 1953, Vladimir Nabokov wrote a note in his diary, at the bottom of a page largely filled with numerical grades for the final assignment of his literature class. “Finished Lolita which was begun exactly 5 years ago.” It was a finish line he’d spent many of those years never expecting to reach.

There were classes to teach at Cornell to pay the bills and to fund his summer trips to hunt butterflies. Other projects had also interrupted Nabokov’s progress on Lolita, from translation work (The Song of Igor’s Campaign) to the first version of his autobiography, which was published in 1951. Lolita ought to have been “a novel I would be able to finish in a year if I could completely concentrate upon it.” Instead it emerged piecemeal, with him writing on index cards in the passenger seat of a car or lying in bed at night.

Nabokov had spent the summer of 1953 trip writing steadily, almost maniacally, dictating his prose to Véra, then “crumpling each old manuscript sheet once it had served its turn and discarding the pages out the car window or into a hotel fireplace.” Nabokov put in sixteen-hour writing days over the course of the fall of 1953—on Cornell’s dime—delegating the teaching and exam-marking to Véra.

He grew anxious about the manuscript as the pages piled up. In a September 29, 1953, letter to Katharine White at the New Yorker, Nabokov called the book an “enormous, mysterious, heartbreaking novel that, after five years of monstrous misgivings and diabolical labors, I have more or less completed.” He was certain the New Yorker wouldn’t want to publish an excerpt, but the magazine had a first-look agreement on anything Nabokov wrote, and he always listened to White’s feedback, whatever the outcome. She liked it, but confirmed Nabokov’s suspicions that the magazine wasn’t the right home for an excerpt.

Now, the book was finished. An odyssey that did not, in fact, begin on December 6, 1948, but at least a decade earlier, as Volshebnik, or in 1947, when Nabokov wrote to Edmund Wilson: “I am writing… a short novel about a man who liked little girls—and it’s going to be called The Kingdom by the Sea.” Nabokov knew he was writing a novel that could cause outrage and controversy. No wonder he attempted to destroy the manuscript at least twice that we know of.

The first time was in the fall of 1948. As Stacy Schiff recounted in her biography of Véra, Nabokov carried his manuscript to the trash cans behind his house on Seneca Street in Ithaca. When Véra realized what Vladimir was set upon doing, she raced out to stop him. Just before she got there, one of Nabokov’s students at Cornell, Dick Keegan, chanced upon the scene. He saw Nabokov beginning to feed his manuscript sheets into a fire set near the trash cans. “Appalled, [Véra] fished the few sheets she could from the flames. Her husband began to protest. ‘Get away from there!’ Véra commanded, an order Vladimir obeyed as she stomped on the pages she had retrieved. ‘We are keeping this,’ she announced.”

On at least one other occasion, when Nabokov wished to destroy the Lolita manuscript, Véra also stepped in as savior. It may well be that Nabokov’s attempts to get rid of Lolita were more about performance than intent. As Robert Roper pointed out, “Véra came to the rescue because she was nearby; he did not start fires when his wife was out of the house.” These acts made Véra a veritable Saint Joan[4] figure with respect to Lolita, sacrificing herself—if risking her husband’s ire was a sacrifice—to step in and save what would be one of the most important works of literature in the twentieth century.

Nabokov later told the Paris Review of yet another instance of near-destruction, “one day in 1950.” Once more, Véra “was responsible for stopping me and urging delay and second thoughts as, beset with technical difficulties and doubts, I was carrying the first chapters of Lolita to the garden incinerator.” He may have mixed up the dates and this was the incident that Dick Keegan witnessed. Or there might have been an unrecorded instance where Véra saved the day.

Lolita was ready to be submitted to publishers, but there was a catch: Nabokov refused to put his own name to the novel. He asked Katharine White, in the same letter in which he solicited her feedback, whether book publishers would go along with his request. She replied that “from her experience, an author’s identity sooner or later leaked out.” Still, Nabokov wanted to keep his identity secret, for the same reasons that spurred him to burn the manuscript pages of Lolita as he finished them. He believed being publicly associated with such an incendiary book might imperil both his literary and his teaching careers.

As the manuscript for Lolita made its way around New York publishing houses, Nabokov continued to insist that he publish under a pseudonym. His stubborn desire for anonymity may be one of the reasons why that first round of publishers decided against acquiring Lolita.

Nabokov’s editor at Viking, Pascal Covici, rejected the manuscript. So, too, did James Laughlin, the New Directions publisher whom Nabokov worked with on The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Laughter in the Dark, and Nikolai Gogol. Farrar, Straus and Simon & Schuster also came back with the same verdict: they didn’t believe they could publish because it would be too expensive to defend in court on possible obscenity charges. Jason Epstein at Doubleday did want to publish, but the company president, once he got wind of what Lolita was about, overruled him.

The manuscript also detoured away from publishing offices, making its way into the literary world. The critic Edmund Wilson read half and expressed complicated feelings about the book in a letter to Nabokov (“I like it less than anything else of yours I have read”), perhaps because it reminded him too much of his own censorship battles after the publication of his novel Memoirs of Hecate County, which was banned and then pulped. Wilson’s former wife, the novelist and literary critic Mary McCarthy, grew “negative and perplexed” by Lolita, but Wilson’s present wife, Elena, liked the book. Dorothy Parker almost certainly read it, too, if a parody piece in the New Yorker featuring a character named “Lolita” is enough to go by.

Influential literary readers were all well and good, but their verdicts did not matter if the book never found a publisher. The last of the rejections by American book firms arrived in February 1955. To publish Lolita, Nabokov had to look outside of America, and beyond highbrow intellectual circles. Nabokov joked to Edmund Wilson several weeks later: “I suppose it will be finally published by some shady firm with a Viennese-Dream name.” The joke became truth before the summer of 1955 was over.

MAURICE GIRODIAS was the founder and publisher of Olympia Press, best known for publishing books others wouldn’t touch. Most of those books were, in fact, smut—badly written, hastily produced. Others got that label affixed to them, like Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn and Tropic of Cancer, J. P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man, and the pseudonymous The Story of O (revealed, decades later, to be the work of Anne Desclos).

Nabokov’s Europe-based agent, Doussia Ergaz, submitted Lolita to Girodias because of his work as an art-book publisher. She didn’t seem to know much about the seedier side of Olympia Press. Girodias was fully aware of the literary value of Nabokov’s work, and what a boon it would be for Olympia’s list. Girodias offered on the book in mid-May 1955. Ergaz then wrote Nabokov: “He finds the book not only admirable from the literary point of view, but he thinks that it might lead to a change in social attitudes toward the kind of love described in Lolita, provided of course that it has this authenticity, this burning and irrepressible ardor.”

Nabokov went along with Girodias’s misapprehension about there being a social aim to the novel because he was relieved Lolita had at last found a publisher. That relief dissipated quickly, once he realized the contract he’d signed on June 6, 1955, better resembled a devil’s bargain. Nabokov’s new publisher had mistaken the author for his creation, thinking Nabokov drew upon some perverse experience. Girodias also insisted the novel be published under Nabokov’s name, and Nabokov did not feel he had the leverage to object, when the alternate option was no publication at all. Nabokov also did not see galley proofs until it was too late to make changes, which vexed a man known for his fastidiousness to no end. Olympia Press published Lolita on September 16, 1955, but Nabokov did not discover that it was out for several weeks. And the published version, as Nabokov feared, was riddled with errors.

What most infuriated Nabokov, however, was Girodias’s blithe attitude about copyright and about paying him what he was owed. The publisher had registered Lolita’s copyright in Nabokov’s name as well as to Olympia Press. Nabokov did not discover the joint copyright registration until early 1956, and because of American copyright laws at the time, he had just five years to republish Lolita in America or else the novel would fall into the public domain.

The Copyright Office in Washington advised Nabokov to get a “quit-claim”—a formal renunciation of copyright. The publisher did not reply at first, then dragged his feet throughout 1956 and 1957. As Nabokov later recalled, “From the very start I was confronted with the peculiar aura surrounding [Girodias’s] business transactions with me, an aura of negligence, evasiveness, procrastination, and falsity.”

Girodias also had a pesky habit of failing to pay royalties or to send statements. Thus, Nabokov saw no money from Lolita over the first two years of publication, despite strong sales in France. In October 1957, he had finally had enough of Girodias’s prevarications and shady dealings, telling him the deal was off and that as a result, all rights reverted back to him. Girodias paid what was owed (44,220 “anciens francs”), and Nabokov let the matter go. Girodias, however, soon reverted back to his nonpayment ways, and Nabokov’s irritation increased. He needed the money, but above all, he needed to be free of Olympia in order to publish Lolita the way he had always wished.

Fortunately for Nabokov, his mood was about to lighten. Lolita was about to find, at long last, a home in America.

ON AUGUST 30, 1957, Nabokov received a letter from Walter Minton, president and publisher of G. P. Putnam’s Sons. “Being a rather backward example of that rather backward species, the American publisher, it was only recently that I began to hear about a book called Lolita,” Minton wrote. After some more preamble, he got to the point: “I am wondering if the book is available for publication.”

Minton, in his early thirties, had succeeded his father, Melville, as publisher two years earlier, and within months established his taste for novels too controversial for other publishers. Putnam published Norman Mailer’s second novel, The Deer Park, which had been turned down by his option publisher, and several others, for a graphic description of oral sex that each publisher feared would run afoul of obscenity laws. This passage did not deter Minton, who authorized Putnam to run newspaper ads declaring The Deer Park was “The Book Six Publishers Refused to Bring You!”

Minton enjoyed being part of the cultural conversation, especially when there was a chance that the conversation would offend people. In hindsight, it made sense he ended up publishing Lolita. The delicious thing is that he learned of the novel from an unlikely source: his then-mistress Rosemary Ridgewell, a showgirl at a Midtown Manhattan nightclub called the Latin Quarter. Ridgewell had read excerpts of Lolita in the Anchor Review. “I thought Nabokov had a very interesting way of writing, very, you know—crystalline?” said Ridgewell in 1958.

Minton, in turn, discovered the pages at her Upper East Side apartment. “I woke in the middle of the night and there was this story on the table. I started reading,” he recalled in early 2018, sixty years later. “By morning, I knew I had to publish it.” (Ridgewell was in line for a tidy payday for her literary scouting efforts, per a standing Putnam policy: the equivalent of 10 percent of an author’s royalties for the first year, plus 10 percent of the publisher’s share of subsidiary rights for two years.)

When Nabokov received Minton’s letter, he had all but given up on Lolita’s publishing prospects in America. For more than three years, multiple publishers had expressed interest, only to back off. Now it irked him that Girodias might be in line for a significant payout when he had been so slow with the initial Lolita royalties, and then did not bother to pay further monies Nabokov was owed. In the two years since Lolita first appeared in book form, he was desperate to reap the financial rewards—as well as to get the critical attention he deserved.

Lolita had been banned in France, excerpted in the Anchor Review, praised by the novelist Graham Greene, excoriated by the literary editor and critic John Gordon, and bought in droves by those willing to smuggle copies back into America. All manner of people benefited from Lolita, whether to praise or denounce it, but Vladimir Nabokov had hardly earned a dime for his years of creative labor.

Minton’s letter augured a change in fortune. Nabokov wrote back on September 7 to say Minton was free to negotiate with Olympia Press, though “I would have to give my approval to the final arrangements.” Nabokov added a warning: “Mr. Girodias, the owner of Olympia, is a rather difficult person. I shall be delighted if you come to terms with him.” Minton did not seem fazed by Girodias’s unsavory reputation. Nor was the Putnam publisher perturbed by the prospect of defending Lolita all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary, though he cautioned Nabokov that he could not make such a “blanket guarantee”—rather, he wrote that it was more prudent to “present the book in such a way as to minimize its chance of prosecution.”

Minton also wondered whether Lolita could, in fact, fall into the public domain. He said as much when he met the author in Ithaca, braving a snowstorm to do so. Nabokov told Minton that he knew “at least three or four thousand copies” of the Olympia Press edition of Lolita had been sold in the United States. Minton explained, “I said to him, ‘Don’t ever open your mouth about that to anybody because if it ever became established your copyright wouldn’t be worth beans.”

Nabokov kept his mouth shut about these extra sales. He took more time to swallow his pride with respect to Girodias. Much as he wanted to be financially free of his former publisher—going so far as to declare the original contract null and void in light of Girodias’s inability to abide by the terms—he agreed, grudgingly, with Minton that it was better to allow Girodias a stake in Lolita’s American publication so they could be sure to get the book out as soon as possible.

As Minton explained to him over the winter of 1958, publishing Lolita when interest was high would make it more likely that the courts would rule in Nabokov’s favor: the many articles, vociferous discussion, and chatter would demonstrate this was a book of high literary merit, not low smut. Should Nabokov delay in publishing Lolita in America to resolve his dispute with Girodias, the favorable publicity could evaporate—and so would the potential for a great financial windfall, whatever a court of law might decide.

Nabokov saw Minton’s logic. He wrote the publisher back in early February 1958 to agree to terms (including the 50/50 royalty split with Girodias, with each receiving 7.5 percent of the hardcover proceeds). Minton cabled Girodias on February 11 and received Nabokov’s signed contract on March 1.

By the time of the novel’s American publication date on August 18, 1958, it was clear to all, but most especially to Nabokov, that he was about to be vaulted from literary obscurity, and that Lolita was about to arrive with hurricane-level force.

VLADIMIR AND VÉRA NABOKOV left Ithaca on another road trip in the summer of 1958. Whether to fend off nerves or steel themselves for what was to come, the couple traveled more than eight thousand miles in search of butterflies. Nabokov had also decided to take a leave of absence from Cornell beginning in the fall because of all of the prepublication demands for Lolita. They returned to New York in early August, in time for a press reception at the Harvard Club. Véra recorded her impressions of the evening, and of her husband, in their shared Page-a-Day diary: “Vladimir was a tremendous success… amusing, brilliant, and—thank God—did not say what he thinks of some famous contemporaries.”

On publication day, Minton sent the following telegram to the Nabokovs: “EVERYBODY TALKING OF LOLITA ON PUBLICATION DAY YESTERDAYS REVIEWS MAGNIFICENT AND NEW YORK TIMES BLAST THIS MORNING PROVIDED NECESSARY FUEL TO FLAME 3OO REORDERS THIS MORNING AND BOOK STORES REPORT EXCELLENT DEMAND CONGRATULATIONS.”

Minton was referring to Elizabeth Janeway’s rave review, which ran on Sunday, August 17, in the New York Times Book Review. She described the novel as “one of the funniest and one of the saddest books of the year” and declared that it was anything but pornographic: “I can think of few volumes more likely to quench the flames of lust than this exact and immediate description of its consequences.” Janeway’s positive reaction, plus the increased demand, would compensate for Orville Prescott’s pan in the daily paper on publication day proper, August 18.

The reorder number from retailers zoomed up to 6,777 in the first four days after its publication. By the end of September, Lolita was atop the New York Times bestseller list, having sold more than eighty thousand copies. It remained at number one for the next seven weeks. Six months after ensuring Lolita would be published in America without legal hassle or copyright consequence, Nabokov and Minton’s mutual investment was paying clear and major dividends. There were more riches in store for the Nabokovs. On Minton’s recommendation, they retained Irving “Swifty” Lazar to sell film rights to Lolita to Stanley Kubrick for $150,000.

Véra was the one who kept track of it all, recording every bit of Lolita-related news in the months immediately preceding and following the novel’s publication in the Page-a-Day diary. Nabokov, on the other hand, seemed “supremely indifferent—occupied with a new story” and with cataloging his summertime butterfly-hunting bounty. Or at least that was the guise he adopted, as described by his wife. As the deluge of letters, interview requests, and subsidiary rights inquiries streamed in, Nabokov wrote his sister: “[All this] ought to have happened thirty years ago…. I don’t think I shall need to teach any more.”

Nabokov proved correct. The indefinite leave of 1958 became permanent retirement from Cornell at the end of 1959, when he was sixty. Lolita’s success enabled his permanent break with the United States, though he would continue to insist, years after moving to the Montreux Palace hotel in Switzerland, that he might return. But Switzerland’s advantageous tax laws were too much of a boon—as was a greater sense of control and privacy, as “Hurricane Lolita” grew stronger and louder. Now that Nabokov could afford to write full-time, thanks to his most American book, he could embark upon his next phase: as a literary celebrity in voluntary exile, as opposed to the peripatetic refugee. He would see the country that gave him shelter, sanctuary, and the source material for his most famous novel again only a handful of times.

Lolita moved far beyond the bestseller list to become a cultural and global phenomenon. The template was in place for generations of readers to be taken in by Humbert Humbert, forgetting that Dolores Haze was his victim, not his seducer.

At the time, no one noticed that Lolita was published in the United States on the sixth anniversary, to the day, of Sally’s death. And no one made the connection between fictional nymphet and real girl for several more years.