Minton cabled Girodias on February 11 and received Nabokov’s signed contract on March 1. By the time of the novel’s American publication date on August 18, 1958, it was clear to all, but most especially to Nabokov, that he was about to be vaulted from literary obscurity, and that Lolita was about to arrive with hurricane-level force. VLADIMIR AND VÉRA NABOKOV left Ithaca on another road trip in the summer of 1958. Whether to fend off nerves or steel themselves for what was to come, the couple traveled more than eight thousand miles in search of butterflies.
