Publisher who sought to release "Lolita" has died

The publisher who took a gamble on bringing Lolita to the United States has passed away.

Walter J. Minton died Tuesday at age ninety-six, reports the Associated Press.

Minton inherited his role as president of Putnam (now part of Penguin Random House) and gained a reputation for being willing to take risks on books.

In addition to Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel, Minton picked up Norman Mailer’s The Deer Park after it was dropped for obscenity concerns, the risqué novel Candy, by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg; and a reissue of Fanny Hill, an erotic novel first published in the 18th century.

The boldest and most profitable offer Minton made, though, was certainly to release Lolita, which had been out for two years in Europe but frightened most US publishers.

Learn the odd way in which the novel caught his attention in the AP’s obituary.

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