Vladimir Nabokov Signed Contract.

Typed contractual letter from Jason Epstein to Vladimir Nabokov, signed by both, for the publication of “On a Book Entitled Lolita” in The Anchor Review. Doubleday & Company INC, 575 Madison Avenue, New York: 6 December 1956. A signed contractual letter capturing a key moment in the publication history of Lolita, being Jason Epstein’s letter to Nabokov enclosing a check for $200 to purchase “our right to publish your essay, ‘On a Book Entitled LOLITA’ in THE ANCHOR REVIEW in the English language throughout the world”, the letter received by Nabokov and return bearing his typed acknowledgement approving the contract, with his signature. It was the Anchor Review which in 1957 first published any part of Lolita in the United States, a 90-page extract, accompanied by Nabokov’s essay, of which Epstein’s letter/contract treats. It was in this essay that Nabokov archly defined the thrust of his controversial novel in response to some early critics: “After Olympia Press, in Paris, published the book [in 1955], an American critic suggested that Lolita was the record of my love affair with the romantic novel. The substitution ‘English language’ for ‘romantic novel’ would make this elegant formula more correct.” It would not be 1 23/07/2021 until 1958 that the full novel would be published in America, by Putnam’s.