"Chasing Lolita, published on the fiftieth anniversary of Lolita's American publication, is an essential contemporary companion to Vladimir Nabokov's great novel. It establishes who Lolita really was back in 1958, explores her predecessors of all stripes, and examines the multitude of movies, theatrical shows, literary spinoffs, artifacts, fashion, art, photography, and tabloid excesses that have distorted her identity and stolen her name. It considers not just the "Lolita effect" but shifting attitudes toward the always volatile mix of sex, children, and popular entertainment - from Victorian times to the present. And it also looks at some real-life cases of young girls who became the innocent victims of someone else's obsession - unhappy sisters to one of the most affecting heroines in American fiction, and one of the most widely misunderstood. "--Jacket.