50 Fun Facts About Lolita

Who wrote the 1955 novel Lolita?

He wrote it in English, his third language, after producing his first nine novels in his mother tongue while living in Berlin.

Under what pseudonym does the narrator of Lolita write his memoir?

The doubled name recalls Poe's 'William Wilson', a tale about a man haunted by his double, just as the narrator is shadowed by a rival.

What is the real name of the girl the narrator calls 'Lolita'?

'Lolita' is the Spanish diminutive of Dolores; critics note the book gives us her feelings only in glimpses through the narrator's self-serving account.

How old is the girl the narrator calls Lolita when he first meets her?

Kubrick later pointed out that Sue Lyon was 13 when cast, closer to the book's 'twelve and a half' than many audiences assumed.

The narrator's mother-tongue subject as a professor is the literature of which country?

His textbook comparing French and English writers lets the novel pack in Flaubert, Proust, Rabelais, Baudelaire and Ronsard.

Lolita opens with a fictitious foreword by which invented editor of psychology books?

He explains that the memoirist died of heart disease in jail while awaiting trial, and reveals the girl's fate as well.

The narrator's teenage first love, Annabel Leigh, takes her name from a poem by which writer?

'Annabel Lee' is quoted throughout the novel, and its lines are borrowed to describe the narrator's first love.

Nabokov originally intended to call the novel what?

The phrase comes from Poe's 'Annabel Lee', the poem the narrator keeps returning to.

In which fictional New England town does the narrator lodge with the Haze family in 1947?

He later enrols Dolores at a school in Beardsley, and finds her again years afterwards in the mining town of Coalmont.

How does Charlotte Haze, the narrator's wife, die?

She had just read his diary; the drunk driver responsible pays for her funeral out of remorse.

Which famous playwright turns out to have taken Dolores from the hospital in Elphinstone?

The narrator eventually tracks him to his mansion and shoots him; the drug-addled scene is the memoir's 'unspecified crime'.

The character name Vivian Darkbloom, Quilty's co-author, is an anagram of what?

Nabokov had planned to publish anonymously and left the anagram as a wink to alert readers.

According to the foreword, how does Dolores die?

She is married to Dick Schiller and living in Coalmont when the narrator sees her for the last time.

Which coined word from Lolita went on to enter most dictionaries?

Its rarer male counterpart, 'faunlet', never caught on; the book is full of multilingual puns and anagrams.

Nabokov finished Lolita on 6 December 1953, after how many years of work?

Viking, Simon & Schuster, New Directions, Farrar Straus and Doubleday all turned it down before he looked abroad.

Who stopped Nabokov when he tried to burn unfinished drafts of Lolita?

Véra was also his typist, editor, translator, agent, chauffeur and teaching stand-in.

Lolita was first published in 1955 in which city?

Turned down by every major US house, it appeared as a pair of green paperbacks 'swarming with typographical errors'.

Which publisher, better known for erotica, issued the first edition of Lolita?

Maurice Girodias's imprint also first printed Naked Lunch, The Ginger Man and Story of O; three-quarters of its list was described as 'pornographic trash'.

Which English novelist rescued Lolita by naming it a best book of 1955 in the Sunday Times?

The Sunday Express editor John Gordon shot back that it was 'the filthiest book I have ever read', and British customs began seizing copies.

How many copies were in the first 1955 printing of Lolita?

It sold out without a single substantial review until an English novelist's end-of-year list.

Which country banned Lolita for two years from December 1956?

The Minister of the Interior acted after the British Home Office had ordered customs to seize copies; Argentina, Australia, Belgium and others also banned it.

Which American publisher finally issued Lolita in the United States in August 1958?

It went into a third printing within days; the Cincinnati Public Library banned it a month later.

Lolita was the first novel since which book to sell 100,000 copies in its first three weeks in the US?

By 2005 the novel was estimated to have sold 50 million copies worldwide.

Which New York Times critic dismissed Lolita as 'dull, dull, dull'?

The review had no effect on sales; Lionel Trilling instead warned that readers were being seduced into condoning the narrator.

The 1959 British edition of Lolita helped end which Conservative MP and publisher's career?

He was a partner in Weidenfeld & Nicolson, the firm that finally published the book in London.

Nabokov said the 'initial shiver of inspiration' for Lolita came from a newspaper story about what?

The animal in the Jardin des Plantes produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal, he wrote in his 1956 afterword.

Under what English title was Nabokov's 1939 novella anticipating Lolita published in 1986?

Volshebnik already used the idea of a molester and his victim checking into a hotel as father and daughter.

The novel itself mentions the real 1948 kidnapping of Sally Horner by which 50-year-old mechanic?

He travelled with the 11-year-old across several states for 21 months, claiming to be an FBI agent; scholar Alexander Dolinin argues she was a prototype for Dolores.

Nabokov's own 1967 translation of Lolita, published in New York by Phaedra, was into which language?

It contains his only known published instance of translating his own poetry from English into Russian, and he mourned finding his 'wonderful Russian language' had withered.

Nabokov taught literature from 1948 to 1959 at which university?

His friend and colleague there, Morris Bishop, warned him against signing with the erotica publisher who took the book.

Besides writing, Nabokov was an expert in which branch of natural science?

As a Harvard research fellow he organised the Museum of Comparative Zoology's collection and described the Karner blue.

After Lolita's success, Nabokov moved in 1961 to a hotel in which Swiss town, where he lived until he died?

He and Véra took rooms in the Montreux Palace Hotel on the shore of Lake Geneva.

Who directed the first film of Lolita, released in 1962?

With Nabokov's consent he moved the novel's ending to the start of the film, and let Peter Sellers pile on disguises as Quilty.

Who played the narrator in the 1962 film?

Shelley Winters was Charlotte and Sue Lyon, in her debut, played Dolores.

Nabokov received an Academy Award nomination for the 1962 film in which category?

Kubrick and producer James Harris rewrote most of his script without taking credit; Nabokov's own version was published in 1974.

How old was Sue Lyon when filming of the 1962 Lolita began?

She won the Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer; Nabokov later said a French actress four years younger would have been ideal.

Where was much of the 1962 film, set in New England and the American Midwest, actually shot?

A supposed mid-western town in the closing scenes is Grover Road in Oxhey, near Watford; some footage was shot in Albany, New York.

Kubrick blamed which two bodies for stopping him dramatising the erotic side of the story in 1962?

He said he probably would not have made the film had he known how restricted he would be.

A dance number from the 1962 film became a hit single under what title, with Sue Lyon credited as singer?

Nelson Riddle and Bob Harris wrote the score; the B-side, 'Turn off the Moon', was also sung by Lyon.

Who played the narrator in Adrian Lyne's 1997 film of Lolita?

Dominique Swain played Dolores, Melanie Griffith was Charlotte and Frank Langella played Quilty.

Unable to find a US distributor, the 1997 film premiered in America on which cable network in 1998?

It later had a tiny theatrical run to qualify for awards, grossing about $1.1 million against a $62 million budget.

Stephen Schiff got the 1997 job after scripts from which two heavyweights were rejected?

James Dearden of Fatal Attraction also had a draft turned down; it was Schiff's first movie script.

Which playwright's 1981 stage version of Lolita flopped, with Nabokov appearing as 'A Certain Gentleman'?

Frank Rich predicted fatal damage to the playwright's career, and the author's estate had threatened a lawsuit over the character.

Alan Jay Lerner and John Barry turned the novel into a 1971 musical with what title?

It was revived in a 2019 York Theatre production pieced together from several of Lerner's drafts.

Which composer wrote a Lolita opera that premiered in Swedish at the Royal Swedish Opera in 1994?

Boston composer John Harbison later abandoned his own Lolita opera amid the city's clergy abuse scandal.

Azar Nafisi's 2003 memoir about a secret women's book group in Iran is titled what?

Nafisi is among the critics who describe the narrator plainly as a rapist.

Sting said the idea behind The Police's 'Don't Stand So Close to Me' was 'let's write a Lolita story'; what had been his job before the band?

The song's nod to Nabokov was mocked for its rhyme, which Sting cheerfully admitted was 'terrible'.

Whose 2012 album Born to Die was noted for 'loads of Lolita references' and a bonus track of that name?

Katy Perry's earlier album cover for One of the Boys also echoed the Kubrick film's look.

In Japan, the word 'Lolita' evolved into a positive term and gave its name to what?

The style features full skirts and petticoats, with Gothic, Sweet and Punk variations; the novel was first translated into Japanese in 1956.

Which later Nabokov novel jokes about a 'Hurricane Lolita' hitting the American east coast in 1958?

Narrator Charles Kinbote wonders why anyone would name a storm after 'an obscure Spanish nickname'.