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Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita
to Véra
Foreword
"Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male," such were the two titles under which the writer of the
present note received the strange pages it preambulates. "Humbert Humbert," their author, had died in legal
captivity, of coronary thrombosis, on November 16, 1952, a few days before his trial was scheduled to start. His
lawyer, my good friend and relation, Clarence Choate Clark, Esq., now of he District of Columbia bar, in asking
me to edit the manuscript, based his request on a clause in his client's will which empowered my eminent cousin to
use his discretion in all matters pertaining to the preparation of "Lolita" for print. Mr. Clark's decision may have
been influenced by the fact that the editor of his choice had just been awarded the Poling Prize for a modest work
("Do the Senses make Sense?") wherein certain morbid states and perversions had been discussed.
My task proved simpler than either of us had anticipated. Save for the correction of obvious solecisms and a
careful suppression of a few tenacious details that despite "."'s own efforts still subsisted in his text as
signposts and tombstones (indicative of places or persons that taste would conceal passion spare), this
remarkable memoir is presented intact. Its author's bizarre cognomen is his own invention; and, of course, this
mask — through which two hypnotic eyes seem to glow — had to remain unlifted in accordance with its wearer's
wish. While "Haze" only rhymes with the heroine's real surname, her first name is too closely interwound with the
inmost fiber of the book to allow one to alter it; nor (as the reader will perceive for himself) is there any practical
necessity to do so. References to "."'s crime may be looked up by the inquisitive in the daily papers for
September-October 1952; its cause and purpose would have continued e under my reading l