Welding theorized, with the careful, awkwardly worded hedge, that “it is not unlikely to suppose” that Nabokov did not begin to work on Lolita “until 1950, under the stimulus of the stories of the LaSalle-Horner case. All evidence, in fact, would seem to support this position.” This is false, since Nabokov’s own December 1953 diary entry, celebrating the completion of the manuscript after five years of work, refutes Welding. We also know this supposition is false thanks to the existence of The Enchanter.
