This might be better suited to a history of literature subreddit if one exists, but here goes. I've always heard that Vladimir Nabokov himself wasn't initially aware that Olympia Press, the body that published the first editions of Lolita, was infamous for publishing pornography, and I've often wondered how that colored the novel's reception and reputation. (I remember seeing a Playboy-type cartoon illustration of a teenage girl eagerly reading the novel in front of her mom and dad with the mom remarking how sweet it is, she's found a novel about a little girl just her same age! Which to my modern eyes seems off color not because the book is "dirty" but because the book features Dolly being raped by Humbert, a lot.) To plenty of commentators the novel's long since quit seeming like a monolithic Dirty Book and discussions of it treat the novel as a serious (though funny) work worthy of serious analysis and covering serious territory rather than just a throwaway sex farce. Apart from professional literary critics' responses and formal responses by governmental bodies, do we have any idea how the general public responded to the book's themes and reputation when it was made available in the US and subsequently sold like hotcakes? Was there a public dialogue on the book's merits and what it was "really" about, or when did the shift occur from uneasy jokes and treatment of the book as risque to treating it as a serious novel or at least a novel like any other? Did women discuss it differently than men? The world at large still has pretty mixed feelings about the book as projects like Lolita: Story Of A Cover Girl illustrate but I'm more interested right now in public opinion in the context of the decade and its mores rather than analysis of the novel itself.