Lolita Book Covers: 200+ Designs From 40 Countries Since 1955, Including Nabokov’s Favorite Design

How to mar­ket a book like Loli­ta, which, upon its pub­li­ca­tion in 1955, prompt­ly found itself banned in France, Britain, New Zealand, Argenti­na and oth­er coun­tries? Care­ful­ly. At least at first.

Over at Cov­er­ing Loli­ta, you can see an archive of the designs that have adorned the cov­er of the famous­ly con­tro­ver­sial book. It all starts with the orig­i­nal 1955 edi­tion, which was the most vanil­la cov­er imag­in­able. Loli­ta and Hum­bert Hum­bert — they were nowhere to be seen.

By the 1960s, pub­lish­ers got a lit­tle less gun shy, and the cov­ers, more risqué. See this 1964 Turk­ish ver­sion as an exam­ple. Or the sec­ond image above, a Dan­ish cov­er from 1963.

So what cov­er did Nabokov per­son­al­ly favor? Glad you asked. Long ago, we showed you some footage of Nabokov mar­veling over dif­fer­ent “Loli­ta” cov­er designs. And, in it, he points to his favorite: a French sketch from 1963, which appears up top.

This just a small sam­pling of what you will find in the Cov­er­ing Loli­ta Archive, a gallery that cur­rent­ly con­tains 210 book and media cov­ers from 40 coun­tries, span­ning 58 years.

The archive brings you right up to 2014. (2015 and 2016 will like­ly be account­ed for pret­ty soon.) If you have a favorite design, please let us know in the com­ments sec­tion below.

Note: You can down­load essen­tial works by Vladimir Nabokov as free audio­books (includ­ing Jere­my Irons read­ing Loli­ta) if you sign up for a 30-Day Free Tri­al with Audi­ble. Find more infor­ma­tion on that pro­gram here.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vladimir Nabokov Names the Great­est (and Most Over­rat­ed) Nov­els of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Vladimir Nabokov (Chan­nelled by Christo­pher Plum­mer) Teach­es Kaf­ka at Cor­nell

Vladimir Nabokov Mar­vels Over Dif­fer­ent “Loli­ta” Book Cov­ers

The Note­cards on Which Vladimir Nabokov Wrote Loli­ta: A Look Inside the Author’s Cre­ative Process