But Lolita, the heroine of Vladimir Nabokov's novel, is now embroiled in a new furore. The writer's relatives and supporters have rejected a claim that her character was plagiarised from a 1916 novel by a German journalist who went on to support Hitler.

Michael Marr, a German literary scholar, suggested that a novella, Lolita, written in 1916 by Heinz von Eschwege, may have provided the foundations for the 1955 Nabokov novel.

Von Eschwege, he discovered, wrote under the name Von Lichberg and became a noted journalist in the Third Reich, writing rousing accounts of Hitler's torchlight march on the Reichstag in 1933.

Nabokov's Lolita was initially printed in Paris, because American publishers were affronted by its graphic depiction of the lust felt by the middle-aged hero, Humbert Humbert, for Dolores Haze, 12.

The 1916 Lolita features a similar affair with a man lodging at Lolita's house while on holiday. The pair have a passionate affair, then Lolita dies, breaking the older man's heart.

Mr Marr wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: "When you read it today and compare it with the [Nabokov] novel, you have a surreal sense of deja vu. The accordance of the stories' plots, the perspective from which they are told, and the choice of name are amazing.

"Unfortunately there is not a logical rule which would tell us when a certain number of coincidences stop being chance."

Mr Marr was also struck by the similarities between the opening descriptions of the girl. The first-person narrator looks into her eyes and sees she is more than a child.

Mr Marr came across the book at a party when someone told him of the similarities between it and the Nabokov classic.

Dmitri Nabokov, the son of Vladimir, said in an email to a distinguished Nabokov critic, Dieter Zimmer, that the allegation was "either a journalistic tempest in a teacup or a deliberate mystification".

He said the 1916 book was "set in Spain, where the name is hardly a rarity", whereas Vladimir Nabokov's book is set in America, adding that the 1916 novel is a "short piece written by a journalist", and "also appears to be junk".

He said his father, who wrote in Russian, English and French, spoke "practically no German".

In an email to the Guardian venting his anger at claims of plagiarism, he said: "I have seen many of the newspaper articles, whose writers range from the stolid proprietary Germans, to the unethical Norwegians whose headlines blatantly announce forgery, to the staunch no-nonsense Spaniards, to the Italians _ [who] perpetrated some of the worst journalism of all.

"Contrary to what a lot of hacks are saying, there are no similarities of name except for Lolita. The plot is one of the handful of basic plots on which all literature is based." He then asks for advice to help him "quell this claptrap".