by Jeff Edmunds
Editor, Zembla

(CNN) -- When it was first published in 1955, reactions to "Lolita" ranged from rapture to outrage, and the word "controversial" has shadowed the book's title ever since. But with the recent uproar on both sides of the Atlantic over Adrian Lyne's film adaptation of the book, it is sometimes forgotten that the furor 40-odd years ago was a European, rather than American, phenomenon. Unable to find an American firm willing to publish Lolita -- by 1954 four had refused -- Nabokov consented to the novel's being issued in Paris by Maurice Girodias' Olympia Press, publisher of Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and William S. Burroughs, as well as hastily concocted sex novels with titles like "White Thighs", "With Open Mouth", and "The Sexual Life of Robinson Crusoe".

Also see: Interactive map of Humbert Humbert's travels around the United States in the 50s

Although Lolita's first printing of 5,000 copies sold out, there were no notable reviews, and the book would likely have gone unnoticed for some time had not respected author and critic Graham Greene, in an interview published in the London Times, called it one of the best books of the year. Greene's statement outraged John Gordon, editor of the popular Sunday Express, who responded in print, calling "Lolita" "the filthiest book I have ever read" and "sheer unrestrained pornography." The British Home Office ordered customs officials to seize all copies entering the United Kingdom and pressured the French Minister of the Interior to ban the book. On December 20, 1956, the Paris police did just this, and Lolita remained banned in France for two years.

Photo of Nabokov taken at Cornell in 1955, the same year "Lolita" was published in France

Alerted to the controversy, American officials initially withheld two copies of Lolita, but the U.S. Customs Bureau soon released the confiscated copies to their owners, an act that effectively authorized publication of the novel in the United States. The first American edition was issued without incident by Putnam's in 1958. "Lolita" was an enormous success, the first book since "Gone With the Wind" to sell 100,000 copies in the first three weeks of publication. The lack of outrage over the book in America might be attributed to the tenor of the times: sex, and even teen sexuality, was 'in.' Elvis Presley was gyrating to the top of the pop charts and films like "Blackboard Jungle" were glamorizing youth and even juvenile delinquency. Parents were uneasy, but they had more glaring affronts to middle-class values to worry about. "Pedophile" was not a term one read in the morning newspaper. A cynic might add that "Lolita" is a complex and often tricky book, and that only the most fanatical Philistine, intent on ferreting out every incidence of filth, was likely to read it to the end.

But even the laziest prude can sit through a film, and it is the two film versions of "Lolita", the first by Stanley Kubrick in 1962 and the second by Adrian Lyne in 1997, that have provoked the most controversy. In 1962 Kubrick had to deal with both the Production Code (the censorship arm of the Hollywood film industry) and the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency, a film ratings group that wielded considerable influence over the studios. In a 1972 Newsweek interview, Kubrick said that had he realized how severe the censorship limitations were going to be, he "probably wouldn't have made the film." Twenty-five years later, while studio and distributor response to Adrian Lyne's "Lolita" was cooly cautious, the conservative press and public in both the United States and abroad were strident in their criticism. As one studio executive reportedly told Variety, "Pedophilia's a hard sell." With the 1994 passage in New Jersey of Megan's Law, the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1995, and the murder of JonBenet Ramsey in 1996, there is little tolerance for depictions of sex between adults and children, no matter what the context.

But the films should not be confused with the book. Adaptations will come and go, public attitudes will run the gamut between outrage, indifference, and rapture, but "Lolita" is timeless, one of the greatest novels of this or any other century.

Jeff Edmunds is a painter, writer, and translator currently working as a Cataloging Specialist at the University Libraries at Penn State, where he designs and edits Zembla, a Web site devoted to Vladimir Nabokov. His articles and translations from Russian and French have appeared in Nabokov Studies, The Slavic and East European Journal, and Zembla.