Read TIME’s Original Review of Lolita

2 minute read

By the time Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita was published in the United States on this day, Aug. 18, in 1958, the book wasn’t exactly new. As TIME reported in a long review of the work upon its American release, Nabokov had come to the U.S. during World War II with “intellectual luggage [that] included fragments of a book that later, published in Paris in 1955, became a must item of the contraband spice trade in which Henry Miller’s Tropics have bulked large.”

But the fact that it had been read, dissected and debated didn’t stop it from making a splash. That much was clear from the review:

Lolita is a major work of fiction; it is also a shocking book. Prefaced by a fictitious academic fathead who presents it as a message to “parents, social workers, [and] educators,” the book describes the transcontinental debauch of a twelve-year-old girl by a middle-aged monomaniac. As it turns out, the narrator is writing his apologia from a prison cell (he is to be tried for murder). As far as erotic detail is concerned, the book tells little that has not been dealt with in a lot of bestselling fiction; but where the sexy bestsellers talk about the sordid or tragic facts of life in staccato sociology, couch jargon or four-letter words, Lolita is the more shocking because it is both intensely lyrical and wildly funny. It is (in many of its pages) a Medusa’s head with trick paper snakes, and its punning comedy as well as its dark poetics will disappoint the smut hounds—a solemn breed.

Lolita, the critic concluded, wasn’t merely a book worthy of publication despite its subject matter—it was a work of literature with something to teach the world.

Nabokov himself, TIME added, had only a “writer’s interest in nymphets.” It was a different part of the Lolita plot that he had a real personal interest in: the journey from motel to motel. “I love motels,” he told the magazine. “I would like to have a chain of motels—made of marble. I would put one every ten minutes along the highway, and I would travel from one to another with my butterfly net.”

Read the full review here, in the TIME Vault: To the End of Night

Vlad the (Insect) Impaler: LIFE With Nabokov and His Butterflies

Vladimir Nabokov looks at a butterfly, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.
Vladimir Nabokov looks at a butterfly, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.Carl Mydans—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Vladimir Nabokov and his wife Vera chase butterflies near Six Mile Creek, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.
Vladimir Nabokov and his wife Vera chase butterflies near Six Mile Creek, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.Carl Mydans—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Vladimir Nabokov hunts butterflies, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.
Vladimir Nabokov hunts butterflies, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.Carl Mydans—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Vladimir Nabokov hunts butterflies, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.
Vladimir Nabokov hunts butterflies, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.Carl Mydans—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Vladimir Nabokov hunts butterflies, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.
Vladimir Nabokov hunts butterflies, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.Carl Mydans—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Vera Nabokov, wife of Vladimir Nabokov, with a butterfly net, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.
Vera Nabokov, wife of Vladimir Nabokov, with a butterfly net, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.Carl Mydans—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Vladimir Nabokov hunts butterflies, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.
Vladimir Nabokov hunts butterflies, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.Carl Mydans—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Vladimir Nabokov puts a butterfly into an envelope, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.
Vladimir Nabokov puts a butterfly into an envelope, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.Carl Mydans—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Vladimir Nabokov and butterfly, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.
Vladimir Nabokov and butterfly, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.Carl Mydans—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Vladimir Nabokov, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.
Vladimir Nabokov, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.Carl Mydans—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Vladimir Nabokov and collection of butterflies, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.
Vladimir Nabokov and collection of butterflies, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.Carl Mydans—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Vladimir Nabokov mounting his butterflies, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.
Vladimir Nabokov mounting his butterflies, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.Carl Mydans—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Part of Vladimir Nabokov's butterfly collection, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.
Part of Vladimir Nabokov's butterfly collection, Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.Carl Mydans—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

More Must-Reads from TIME

Write to Lily Rothman at lily.rothman@time.com