The real kidnapping case that inspired Lolita...
Found out about this while reading the Wiki article about Lolita. Interesting.
http://hazlitt.net/longreads/real-lolita
AVADA KEDAVRA!!!
Interesting. It's hard to say how MUCH this real incident may have influenced Nabokov though. There are elements of "Lolita" in his early Russian novel "Laughter in the Dark" written well before 1948. He also did a "rough draft" of "Lolita" in a long short story called "The Magician", which I THINK, also predated this.
He might have just clipped the story because it was already on his mind.
"Let be be finale of seem/ The only emperor is the Emperor of Ice Cream"
True. I have a copy of the short story, it wasn't released in the U.S. until his son released it after his death. The version I have is called The Enchanter. There's also a short story called Lolita, that was written by Heinz von Lichberg in the earlier of the 20th Century that may have inspired Nabokov.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1844670384?keywords=two%20lolitas&qid=1447253803&ref_=sr_1_2&sr=8-2
AVADA KEDAVRA!!!
The short story is called "The Enchanter" and it's very easy to see how this story morphed into Lolita. Honestly, I think Nabokov did not base Lolita on any one individual source but combined and drew upon many different sources. Charlie Chaplin's child bride Lita, Sally Horner, ect. I even believe Nabakov based some of both the characters of Humbert and Dolores upon himself.
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