Lolita Resources
This page intends to be a place to find materials to help readers understand the concerns and issues at stake within Nabokov's novel Lolita. A good starting place is a quotation from a letter Nabokov's wife Véra wrote to Elena Sikorski, his sister, about the novel:
"This is not pornography but an amazing, extremely subtle analysis, from within, of a horrible maniac and the tragic fate of a defenseless girl. (V. has studied the laws on orphan guardianship, and there is no law that, in the given circumstances, would have hindered the events described in the novel.)" --Véra Nabokov, Letter of Nov. 12, 1955.
This list is intended to evolve and grow, and suggestions are welcome. We offer two categories of engagement with the novel: non-specialist materials, and materials at a more in-depth, scholarly level.
Materials aimed at all readers
Jamie Loftus, Lolita Podcast
Olivia Mokiejewski, "Lolita: méprise sur un fantasme," ARTE, TV Press Productions, 2021
Ellen Pifer, "On the Dark Side of Aesthetic Bliss: Nabokov's Humanism" in Nabokov and the Novel. Harvard UP, 1980.
Brian Boyd, "Lolita," in Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, Princeton UP, 1991. pp. 227-254.
Julian Connolly, ed. A Reader's Guide to Nabokov's Lolita, Academic Studies P, 2009.
Zoran Kuzmanovich & Galya Diment, eds, Approaches to Teaching Nabokov's Lolita
Agnès Edel-Roy, "Le vertige visionnaire de Lolita. #DitdeDolly." Cahier de l’Herne Vladimir Nabokov. Eds. Yannicke Chupin and Monica Manolescu, Paris: L’Herne, 2023.
Vanessa Springora, Dolores dans le texte. Cahier de l’Herne Vladimir Nabokov. Eds. Yannicke Chupin and Monica Manolescu, Paris: L’Herne, 2023.
Vanessa Springora, Consent. A Memoir. Translated by Natasha Lehrer, HarperVia, 2021.
Neige Sinno, Sad Tiger. Translated by Natasha Lehrer, Seven Stories Press, 2025.
"Lolita." The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov. (pp.305-19)
Materials intended for a specialist or scholarly audience
Michael Wood, "The Language of Lolita," in The Magician's Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction. Random House, 1994. pp. 103-142.
---. "Lolita Revisited," New England Review 17.3 (1995): 15-43.
Mizruchi, Susan L. (Susan Laura). "Lolita in History." American Literature, vol. 75 no. 3, 2003, p. 629-652.
Elena Rakhimova-Sommers, ed., Teaching Nabokov's Lolita in the #MeToo Era
Marie Bouchet, Yannicke Chupin, Agnès Edel-Roy and Julie Loison-Charles, eds., Lolita at 60 / Staging American Bodies.
Marie Bouchet, Lolita. Éditions Atlande, 2009.
Ellen Pifer, ed., Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita: A Casebook
Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, "Lolita, I Presume; On a Character Entitled 'Lolita'” (Miranda 3 (2010))
James Phelan. “Dual Focalization, Retrospective Fictional Autobiography, and the Ethics of Lolita.” In Narrative and Consciousness: Literature, Psychology, and the Brain. Ed. Gary D. Fireman, Ted E. McVay, Jr., Owen J. Flanagan. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003. 129-145.
Ellen Pifer, “Her monster, his nymphet: Nabokov and Mary Shelley.” In Nabokov and His Fiction: New Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. 158-176.
David Rampton, "Lolita" in Vladimir Nabokov: A Critical Study of the Novels, Cambridge UP, 1984. pp. 101-121.
Sarah Herbold, “(I have camouflaged everything, my love)”: Lolita and the Woman Reader.” Nabokov Studies 5 (1998/1999):
71-98.
Brian Boyd, "Lolita: What We Know and What We Don't," Cycnos 2008.
Kuzmanovich, Zoran. “‘Splendid Insincerity’ as ‘Utmost Truthfulness’: Nabokov and the Claims of the Real.” In Nabokov’s World, Volume 1: The Shape of Nabokov’s World, edited by Jane Grayson, Arnold McMillin, and Priscilla Meyer, 26–46. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
Elizabeth Patnoe, “Lolita Misrepresented, Lolita Reclaimed: Disclosing the Doubles.” College Literature 22.2 (1995): 81-104.
Olga Voronina, “The Tale of Enchanted Hunters: Lolita in Victorian Context.” Nabokov Studies 10 (2006): 147–74.
David L. Jones, “Dolorès Disparue.” Symposium 20 (1966): 135–40.
Douglas Anderson, “Nabokov’s Genocidal and Nuclear Holocausts in Lolita.” Mosaic 29, no. 2 (1996): 73–90.
William Anderson, “Time and Memory in Nabokov’s Lolita.” The Centennial Review 24 (1980): 360–83.
Hamrit, Jacqueline. “The Ordeal of Undecidability in Lolita.” In Kaleidoscopic Nabokov: Perspectives françaises, edited by Lara Delage-Toriel and Monica Manolescu, Michel Houdiard, 2009. pp. 85-92.
Brian Boyd, "'Even Homais Nods': Nabokov's Fallibility, or, How to Revise Lolita," Nabokov Studies 2 (1995): 62-86.
Stephen H. Blackwell, "Calendar Anomalies, Pushkin and Aesthetic Love in Nabokov," Slavonic and East European Review 96.3 (2018): 401-431.
Monica Manolescu, "Voiles et caravansérails: l'Orient dans Lolita," Sillages critiques, Miranda, 2010.
---, "Inventing and Naming America: Place and Place Names in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita," European Journal of American Studies 4.1, 2009.
Monica Manolescu and Anne-Marie Paquet-Deyris, Lolita, cartographies de l'obsession. Paris, CNED-PUF, 2009.
Dana Dragunoiu. "Lolita and the Communists" in Vladimir Nabokov and the Poetics of Liberalism. Northwestern University Press, 2011. pp. 82-141.
---.“Humbert’s ‘Sense of Sin’ and Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov” The Nabokovian: Notes and Brief Annotations 88 (Spring 2025): 1-7.
---.“Hazel Shade’s Russian Sisterhood, or Is Pale Fire a Feminist Novel?” Nabokov Studies 18 (2022-2023): 7-28.
---.“Making History from the Future: Lolita and Proust’s Cahier 36.” Nabokov Online Journal 15 (2021): 1-19.
---.“The Afterlives of Odette and Albertine in Lolita’s Final Chapters.” Comparative Literature 72.3 (2020): 340-60.
---. “Lolita: Nabokov’s Rewriting of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.” Nabokov Studies 13 (2014): 20-32.
---. “Time, Memory, the General, and the Specific in Lolita and À la recherche du temps perdu” in Vladimir Nabokov and the Fictions of Memory. Edited by Irena Księżopolska and Mikołaj Wiśniewski. Warsaw: Fundacja Augusta hr. Cieszkowskiego, 2019.
Christine Raguet-Bouvard, Lolita, un royaume au-delà des mers. Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 1996.
Lance Olsen, Lolita: A Janus Text, Twayne, 1984.
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A full-ish list of scholarly publications on Lolita, from The Nabokovian's bibliography (results appear below the search boxes). Items missing from the bibliography? Please add it yourself, or if that makes you uncomfortable, just email them to the site General Editor (SB).