The Olympia Press was a notorious Parisian publishing house that used a legal loophole to mass-produce cheap, pseudonymous English erotica for tourists in the 1950s. Olympia Press was owned by Maurice Girodias, a chaotic businessman who had an eye for avant-garde masterpieces like Lolita but all too often took advantage of his authors. I’ll give you some background…
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Those are the opening lines of Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov’s dazzling literary masterpiece. Lolita was an international bestseller that reshaped modern fiction and established Nabokov as one of the twentieth century’s greatest novelists. There’s a great story about why the first edition was a cheap paperback…
The signed limited edition of Medea: Harlan’s World has one of the greatest collections of signatures of all time. Sheets were circulated among eleven legendary authors, then bound into a deluxe edition of one of the most ambitious experiments in the history of science fiction. Like many, many good stories, this one starts with Harlan Ellison. I’ll…
Inside Mr Enderby is one of my favorite novels, written by renowned British author Joseph Kell and published in 1963. The book follows the life of F.X. Enderby, a dyspeptic poet who lives a solitary life of writing and intestinal eloquence until he is seduced by a glamorous widow who attempts to reform him. The 1960s…