Lolita

When Vladimir Nabokov finished writing "Lolita" in 1953 after five years, he discovered no one was willing to publish it. Viking, Simon & Schuster, New Directions, Farrar, Straus, and Doubleday all rejected the manuscript, citing the storyline involving a 37-year-old man who becomes obsessed with a 12-year-old girl. Olympia Press in France eventually agreed to publish the novel and a first printing of 5,000 sold out in 1955. Three years later, G.P. Putnam's Sons published the first American edition that sold 100,000 copies in three weeks -- the first novel to do so since "Gone with the Wind."