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Gallimard edition. The English version was placed back on the market in
France in September 1959.
British Customs banned the book in 1955, the same year that Graham
Greene, in the Sunday Times, named Lolita one of his three favorite books of
the year. Greene s article led John Gordon to remark in the Sunday Express:
 Without doubt it is the filthiest book I have ever read. Sheer unrestrained
pornography. Several British publishers were eager to bid for the rights to
the novel, but they waited for the enactment of the Obscene Publications
Bill in 1959, which would permit literary merit to be taken into account
should the book be placed on trial. They expected prosecution because
reviewers were already waging a war against the novel, several stating that
the novel should be suppressed in England if it could be proven that  even
a single little girl was likely to be seduced as a result of its publication.
Conservatives in Parliament urged Nigel Nicholson, a member of Parlia-
ment as well as a publisher, not to publish the book, claiming that it would
be detrimental to the party image. He lost his next bid for reelection, partly
because of Lolita.
In contrast, United States Customs determined in February 1957 that
the book was not objectionable and could be admitted into the country.
Therefore, the book could not be legally exported from France, but people
who smuggled the book out could import it legally into the United States.
Despite its admissibility by Customs, U.S. publishers refused to publish Lolita
until G. P. Putnam s Sons took the chance in 1958. A year later, the bans in
England and France were lifted and the book was published openly in those
countries. In the United States, however, the Cincinnati Public Library
banned the book from its shelves after the director observed that  the theme
of perversion seems to me obscene.
147
THE LUSTFUL TURK
The novel was also banned in 1959 in Argentina, where government cen-
sors claimed that the book reflected moral disintegration. In 1960, the minister
of commons in New Zealand banned import of the novel under the Customs
Act of 1913 that prohibited importing books deemed  indecent within the
meaning of the Indecent Publications Act of 1910. To fight the ban, the New
Zealand Council of Civil Liberties imported six copies of the book and suc-
cessfully challenged the Supreme Court. Mr. Justice Hutchin delivered the
judgment, noting that the book had been written with no pornographic intent
and for the educated reader. Basing his decision on the recommendation of a
ministry advisory committee that individual orders should be permitted, the
justice observed that New Zealand Customs did admit certain books addressed
to authorized individuals or intended to be sold to restricted classes. The ban
on Lolita in South Africa, instituted in 1974 because of the  perversion theme
of the novel, was lifted in 1982, and the South African Directorate of Publica-
tions gave permission for its publication in paperback form.
FURTHER READING
Baker, George.  Lolita: Literature or Pornography. Saturday Review, June 22, 1957,
p. 18.
Centerwall, Brandon S.  Hiding in Plain Sight: Nabokov and Pedophilia. Texas
Studies in Literature & Language 32 (Fall 1990): 468 84.
Dupee, F. W.  Lolita in America. Encounter 12 (February 1959): 30 35.
Feeney, Ann.  Lolita and Censorship: A Case Study. References Services Review 21
(Winter 1993): 67 74, 90.
Hicks, Granville.  Lolita and Her Problems. Saturday Review, August 16, 1958, pp.
12, 38.
Levin, Bernard.  Why All the Fuss? Spectator, January 9, 1959, pp. 32 33.
 Lolita in the Dock. New Zealand Libraries 23 (August 1960): 180 83.
Patnoe, Elizabeth.  Lolita Misrepresented, Lolita Reclaimed: Disclosing the Dou-
bles. College Literature 22 (June 1995): 81 104.
Roeburt, John. The Wicked and the Banned. New York: Macfadden Books, 1963.
Scott, W. J.  The Lolita Case. Landfall 58 (June 1961): 134 38.
THE LUSTFUL TURK
Author: Anonymous
Original date and place of publication: 1828, England
Original publisher: J. B. Brookes
Literary form: Novel
SUMMARY
The Lustful Turk, viewed by Kronhausen and Kronhausen as  an instance of
the juncture of literature and pornography, is an epistolary novel in which
148
THE LUSTFUL TURK
Emily Barlow uses letters to reveal her adventures to her friend, Silvia Carey.
The long central letter details her capture by Moorish pirates whose  ren-
egade English captain presents Emily as a gift to the dey of Algiers. She
relates graphically her defloration by the dey:
I quickly felt his finger again introducing the head of that terrible engine I had
before felt, and which now felt like a pillar of ivory to me. . . . [S]ucking my lips
and breasts with fury, he unrelentingly rooted up all obstacles to my virginity.
She becomes a willing victim in ensuing sexual episodes, and the deflorations
of other harem members follow the same description as Emily s.
Silvia derides her friend s apparent acceptance of the imprisonment and
writes that she is disgusted by Emily s  account of the libidinous scenes acted
between you and the beast whose infamous and lustful acts you so particularly
describe. The dey reads the letter and orders his men to abduct Silvia.
The book contains the subplot of two dishonest clerics, Father Angelo
and Pedro, the abbot of St. Francis, who run a white-slave trade between
France and North Africa. The only connection to Emily is that they supply
women to the dey.
As the end of the book nears, the now-pregnant Emily jealously attempts
to learn the identity of the Englishwoman rumored to be the dey s new sexual
interest. With the help of a friendly eunuch, she enters the dey s private
apartments and catches him with the woman.  The first object that met my
eyes was a naked female half reclining on a table, and the Dey with his noble
shaft plunged up to the hilt in her.
Emily faints and then is revived, after which she learns that the new
woman is her friend Silvia, captured by the dey s men and deflowered by
him. The two women decide to share him, but his sexual obsessions lead to
disaster. A Greek girl, newly recruited to the harem, refuses to engage in anal
sex ( buggery ) with the dey and partially cuts off his penis. The dey orders
a doctor to finish the job. He then pickles the testicles in  spirits of wine in
glass vases and gives Emily and Silvia one each before releasing them to
return to England.
CENSORSHIP HISTORY
Such furtively circulated erotica as The Lustful Turk was frequently the target
of societies for the prevention of vice in both England and the United States
in the 19th century. In most cases, shipments of the book were confiscated
and destroyed without protest by the publishers or distributors, who simply
churned out new and cheaply printed copies. The novel was advertised in cat- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]