The protagonist and unreliable narrator is a French literature professor who moves to New England and writes under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert. He details his obsession with and victimization of a 12-year-old girl, Dolores Haze, whom he describes as a "nymphet". Humbert becomes sexually obsessed with Dolores after becoming her stepfather, and romanticizes his obsession. Privately, he calls her "Lolita", the Spanish diminutive for Dolores. The novel was written in English, but fear of censorship in the U.S. and Britain led to its being first published in Paris, France, in 1955 by Olympia Press.
