Lolita. by Nabokov, Vladimir - 1955

New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1955. First American edition and first trade edition of Nabokov's masterpiece. Octavo, original half cloth. Presentation copy on a slip of Lolita, inscribed by Dominique Swain, who played the leader character in the 1997 film bearing the same name to her stepfather, "Dear Martin You're the best second daddy a girl could hope for. I love your outlook on life and am lucky to have been able to look out on and experience life with you. Her's to continuing the adventure! Dominique Swain P.S. You're a better dad than Jeremy Irons, John Travolta, and Nic Cage put together xoxox." The 1997 film adaptation was directed by Adrian Lyne and written by Stephen Schiff. It was the second screen adaptation of Nabokov's novel starring Dominique Swain as Lolita, Jeremy Irons as Humbert Humbert, with supporting roles by Melanie Griffith as Charlotte Haze, and Frank Langella as Clare Quilty. Photograph of Nabokov by Maclean Dameron. Near fine in a very good dust jacket. A unique example. One of the most celebrated books in history, Nabokov's Lolita quickly attained classic status upon publication in 1955. Notable for its controversial subject, the novel was adapted into a film by Stanley Kubrick in 1962, and again in 1997 by Adrian Lyne in addition to several adaptations for stage. "Lolita blazes with a perversity of a most original kind. For Mr. Nabokov has distilled from his shocking material hundred-proof intellectual farce. Lolita seems an assertion of the power of the comic spirit to wrest delight and truth from the most outlandish materials. It is one of the funniest serious novels I have ever read; and the vision of its abominable hero, who never deludes or excuses himself, brings into grotesque relief the cant, the vulgarity, and the hypocritical conventions that pervade the human comedy" (Atlantic Monthly).