This rebinding of the first printing of 1959 was designed for our subscribers of “Books into Film”. Only 12 lettered copies were produced with a new introduction, and issued with a photo from the film.

An extract for the intro follows.

Nabokov said about Lolita that he had set about “inventing America”. He viewed the book as an absurd comedy open to a variety of interpretations. Lo, the girl that become in narrator Humbert’s imagination, the title character, and it’s really the two-fold nature of her that drives him insane – the innocent and the “dirty” (p. 45). By extension, she’s the young, innocent Yankee Country breaking away from the wise, but old class-ridden European deferential culture. She’s the bright future! Another sees her as the cute seductress, the priestess of the enticing consumerist society, narrowing down the future to ultimately self-delusion. Others find a mixture of these two views – the “American Dream” as offering freedom and irresistibly appealing, but ultimately an illusion doomed to shallow dullness. Is it a love affair about two people tragically drawn together? Yet, of course in recent years, with #MeToo and Weinstein etc. another view has gained ground: the child as both individual and societal victim.

The two film adaptations are interesting, revealing yet more interpretations. Stanley Kubrick directed James Mason and Sue Lyon as Lolita – perhaps the most highly thought of; the later version with Jeremy Irons and Dominique Swain seems to lack something. But Irons’ audio-book performance is a marvel, relishing each purple flourish of anti-hero Humbert Humbert’s prose.