In 1947, Vladimir Nabokov wrote to former New Republic editor Edmund Wilson to tell him he was working on "a short novel about a man who liked little girls—and it's going to be called The Kingdom by the Sea." By 1955 that novel appeared in print—but with a different title: Lolita. As soon as the book's subject matter became widely known it garnered hatred and bowdlerization by those who looked right past Nabokov's elegant language and saw, as one editor put it, "filth." In 1957, our reviewer was forced to use a censored version of an excerpt of the book for his review, noting that this edition was "purged of its fleshier parts," and took a different tack. "To dwell on the book’s more lurid side," he said "is to connive with witlessness" and declared the novel "genius." [.....]