NABOKOV (Vladimir).

Lolita. Paris, Gallimard, 1959. In-8, bright pink half-snake leather, outer half of the boards in grey box, joint decorated with a wavy vertical strip of pale pink mosaic box decorated, on the first board, with the author's name pushed vertically in palladium and the title whose letters are pushed in palladium on six irregular pieces of red mosaic box and, on the second plate, the date on a piece of mosaic red box, smooth mute spine, lining and endpapers of pale pink suede, untrimmed, cover and spine, folder and case sheathed in the same pale pink box (Devauchelle). First edition of the first French translation, published by Eric Kahane in the collection Du monde entier. One of 86 copies on vellum pur fil, the only large paper, this one n°2. The original edition of Lolita, in English, was published in Paris in 1955 by Maurice Kahane, known as Maurice Girodias (1919-1990), the older brother of the translator of the French edition, founder of The Olympia Press, and banned from sale in December 1956 by a decision of the administrative court of Paris, which was reversed in January 1958. In addition to his literary translations - of works by William Burroughs, Harold Pinter, James Baldwin, etc. - Eric Kahane (1926-1999) worked on the dubbing and subtitling of more than 250 films, including Stanley Kubrick's 1962 adaptation of Lolita. A very fine copy in an attractive snake and mosaic box binding by the Devauchelle workshop.