First published in 1955, Lolita is notable for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator—a middle-aged literature professor called Humbert Humbert—is obsessed with the 12-year-old Dolores Haze, with whom he becomes sexually involved after he becomes her stepfather. "Lolita" is his private nickname for Dolores. The novel was originally written in English by Russian-American novelist Nabokov and first published in Paris by Olympia Press.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Lolita had a turbulent reception history. Nabokov's initial manuscript was turned down by Viking, Simon & Schuster, New Directions, Farrar, Straus, and Doubleday. After these refusals and warnings, he finally resorted to publication in France, where the book came out as two paperbacks, plagued with typographical errors. After Graham Greene praised the book in the London Sunday Times and Sunday Express editor replied with outrage that it was "the filthiest book I have ever read" and "sheer unrestrained pornography," Lolita was banned in both Britain and France for several years. The first American edition was issued by G. P. Putnam's Sons in August 1958. The book was into a third printing within days and became the first since Gone with the Wind to sell 100,000 copies in its first three weeks.

Besides his work as a writer, Vladimir Nabokov was an entomologist and had a particular interest in butterflies. During the 1940's he was responsible for organizing the butterfly collection of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. In 1967, Nabokov commented: "The pleasures and rewards of literary inspiration are nothing beside the rapture of discovering a new organ under the microscope or an undescribed species on a mountainside in Iran or Peru. It is not improbable that had there been no revolution in Russia, I would have devoted myself entirely to lepidopterology and never written any novels at all."