Lolita (1955) is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris, later translated by the author into Russian and published in 1958 in New York. The novel is both internationally famous for its innovative style and infamous for its controversial subject: the book's narrator and protagonist, Humbert Humbert, becoming obsessed with a 12-year-old girl named Dolores Haze.

After its publication, Lolita attained a classic status, becoming one of the best known and most controversial examples of 20th century literature. The name "Lolita" has entered pop culture to describe a sexually precocious young girl. The novel has been adapted to film twice, once in 1962 by Stanley Kubrick starring James Mason as Humbert Humbert, with Sue Lyon as Lolita, and again in 1997 by Adrian Lyne, starring Jeremy Irons as Humbert Humbert, and Dominique Swain as Lolita.

Time Magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.

Plot summary

Lolita is narrated by Humbert Humbert, a literature scholar born in 1910 in Paris, France, who is obsessed by what he refers to as 'nymphets' (defined as sexually desirable girls between the ages of nine and fourteen). This obsession with young girls appears to have been a result of his failure to consummate an affair with a childhood sweetheart, Annabel Leigh, before her premature death from typhus. Shortly before the start of World War II, Humbert leaves Paris for New York. In 1947 he moves to Ramsdale, a small New England town, to write. When the house in which he is promised a room burns down, he ends up at the door of Charlotte Haze, a widow, who has a sexually charged interpretation of taking in a lodger. As the two make their way through Mrs. Haze's tour of the house, Humbert rehearses different ways of turning her down, but then, after being led out into the garden, he spies Haze's 12-year-old daughter Dolores (variously referred to in the novel as Dolores, Dolly, Lolita, Lola, Lo, L) sunbathing in the garden. Humbert, seeing Annabel Leigh in her, is instantly smitten with the daughter and eagerly agrees to rent the room.

When Lolita is at summer camp, Mrs. Haze gives Humbert an ultimatum by letter that he must marry her (for she has fallen madly in love with him) or move out. He is horrified at first, but sees living with Lolita as his stepdaughter as a way to make her part of his living fantasy. Charlotte appears oblivious to Humbert's distaste for her and his lust for Lolita until she reads his diary records. Horrified and humiliated, Charlotte decides to flee with her daughter, writing letters to Humbert, Lolita, and a strict boarding school for young ladies to which she apparently intends to send her daughter. Charlotte confronts Humbert when he returns home, ignoring his protests that the diary entries are just notes for a novel, she bolts from the house to post the letters. Crossing the street, she is struck and killed by a passing motorist. A child retrieves the letters and gives them to Humbert, who destroys them.