Publishers May Test Ban On Novel ‘Lolita’

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29057, 20 November 1959, Page 14

Publishers May Test Ban On Novel ‘Lolita’

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, November 19. The publishers of the novel “Lolita,” which has been banned by the Minister of Customs (Mr Boord), intend to test the ban in a Supreme Court action, according to the publishers’ New Zealand representative, Mr E. S. J. Haines. “The vendors who were convicted in England for selling copies of ‘Lolita’ imported their copies from the Continent,” said Mr Haines today..

“Since the conviction the Indecent Publications Act has been totally revised, and because of the more liberal and realistic attitude now being taken in England, the English publishers of the book, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, published their edition on November 6 and our information is that it has been well received,” he said.

Mr Haines said Mr Boord had issued what amounted to a challenge when he stated that those who considered the book was not indecent could contest his decision by inviting seizure and having the issue decided in the Courts.

What bookseller is going to the trouble and expense of taking legal action on the issue of indecency of any book published now, or in the future? Mr Haines asked.

He said the position was so unsatisfactory that arrangements were being made to accept the Minister’s challenge and have the question settled in Court. The proceedings contemplated were not designed to obtain a reversal of decision on “Lolita” only, but to clarify the position for booksellers and the publishers.

According to the minutes of evidence taken before the House of Commons Select Committee on the United Kingdom Obscene Publications Bill in May, 1957, the first volume of “Lolita” was prosecuted at Bow Street on April 9, 1956. The defendant was found guilty of publishing an obscene libel and was conditionally discharged for 12 months. The second volume was also prosecuted at Bow Street on September 12, 1956, and the person responsible was fined £2O and £5 costs. Sir John Nott-Bower, Commissioner of Police of the London Metropolis, in his evidence, and in reply to a question concerning borderline categories, said: “I think the only case I know of in which there was any sort of doubt whatever which the police had to deal with in the nature of a borderline case, was that book ‘Lolita’ which I think is a borderline case. That book came into the hands of the police . . . and coming from the source that it did come from, it was more or less automatically submitted to the Director of Public Prosecutions . . .”

According to a literary magazine, “Encounter,” published for the “defence of intellectual liberties against all encroachments on the creative and cultural spirit of man,” American firms turned “Lolita” down in 1954. It made its first appearance in priht in Paris in 1955. Its publishing history goes back to the' spring of 1954 when the author, Nabokov, is quoted as having said: “Finished copying the thing out in longhand . . and at once began casting around for a publisher. The book was submitted to four American firms which rejected it.” The author has been a resident of the United States since 1940 and teaches literature at Cornell University He was living in Paris in 1939, and exiled himself from Russia in 1919. Much of the book is said to have been written in the West of America while the author hunted rare butterflies in his capacity as a part-time lepidopterist

A publisher for the book was found in Paris, and on December 10, 1956, the French police descended on the press prohibiting the further sale and circulation of 25 titles, including “Lolita,” on French territory.

After what has been described as a literary scandal in France, after the press concerned published a letter allegedly from the Home Office to the French Ministry of the Interior, the press resumed business which resulted in the resumption of sale of “Lolita” and other hitherto prohibited titles, though they could not be exhibited or otherwise advertised. The book was published in America in 1957 by Putnams and became a best seller. Reviews of the book and comments on it by literary and political figures in the United Kingdom have varied, but on November 12 “The Times” said in a review: “Nobody is likely to be corrupted by this book, but very few readers are going to be much entertained by the study of mania which is neither objectively clinical nor emotionally engaging.”