Lolita (Crest Giant D338 Complete and Unabridged)

First American Paperback
It is often said and rarely true that a particular novel defies classification  or even description. Such however seems truthfully to be the case with Vladimir Nabokov’s LOLITA. It has been called everything from “‘a strong, a disturbing book” (The Manchester Guardian) and “a distinguished novel” (Graham Greene) to “the funniest book I remember having read” (John Hollander in The Partisan Review). It has been described as “Old Europe debauching young America,” and as “Young America debauching old Europe,” as “a joke on our national cant about youth,” “a cutting exposé of chronic American adolescence and shabby materialism,” and “a diabolic masterpiece.” And rarely in literary history have so many different critics felt compelled to mention so many different writers in their search for parallels to LOLITA and influences on its author. The gamut runs from Balzac to Scott Fitzgerald, from Aristophanes to James Thurber, from Freud and Kraft-Ebbing to Lewis Carroll and Charles Dickens.
As might be expected of a book which has given rise to such widespread and varied comment, the history of LOLITA since it first appeared has been a fascinating one. It was three years after original publication by the Olympia Press in Paris that it was finally published in America in a hardcover edition under the distinguished Putnam imprint, and this Crest reprint marks its first and only appearance as an American paperbound edition.
We give you, then, LOLITA, in full agreement with The Reporter Magazine, whose reviewer, Richard Schikel, said, in the issue of November 28, 1957, “In many ways the most remarkable—and certainly the most original—novel written in English during recent years.”