Ten Things You Don’t Know About Your Favorite Books and Authors

via Thought Catalog

1. Vladimir Nabokov’s classic novel Lolita was turned down by 5 publishers. So controversial was the subject matter (in which an adult man falls obsessively in love with a tween girl) that Nabokov himself planned to publish it under a pseudonym. But the name on the front cover, it turned out, was the least of Nabokov’s problems. Though publishers Viking, Simon & Schuster, New Directions, Farrar, Straus, and Doubleday all agreed the manuscript for Lolita had the makings of a masterpiece, none were brave enough to take on the public uproar that might ensue once readers got a look at the finished book.

Nabokov finally convinced a French publisher of dubious reputation, Olympia Press, to print his tragicomic ode to American mores, inappropriate love, and obsession. When it first appeared in 1955, Lolita met with little…