John McMurtrie is the San Francisco Chronicle’s Book Editor, where he’s worked as an editor for more than ten years. In addition to having worked in journalism for over 20 years, he’s worked as an editor for book publishers.

When it was first published, Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial classicLolita was banned in a long list of countries, including France, Belgium, and Argentina. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Nabokov had difficulty finding a publisher for his novel about divorced scholar Humbert Humbert’s sexual obsession for a 12-year-old ‘nymphet’ named Dolores Haze. After two years of rejections, in 1955 Nabokov eventually resorted to Olympia Press, a Parisian publisher of erotica which four years later gained further infamy after becoming the first publisher willing to bring William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch to the masses.