One day in the early summer of 1955, 1 received a call from a literary agent, a Russian lady by the name of Doussia Ergaz. She told me about an old friend of hers, a Russian émigré now a professor of Russian Literature at Cornell University. He had written a book with a rather dangerous theme which had, for that reason, been rejected by a number of prominent American publishers.

The man's name was Vladimir Nabokov and his book, Lolita, dealt with the impossible amours of a middle-aged man with a girl of twelve who belonged to the seductive species for which Nabokov had invented the word "nymphet."

I asked Madame Ergaz to send me the manuscript, which promptly turned up complete with a curriculum vitae in which I read:

"Born 1899, St. Petersburg, Russia. Old Russian nobility. Father eminent statesman of the Liberal group, elected member of the First Duma. Paternal grandfather State Minister of Justice under Czar Alexander 11. Maternal great grandfather President of Academy of Medicine.