The cover of
Young Adam by Alexander Trocchi as published by the
Olympia Press of Maurice Girodias, son of Jack Kahane, first French publisher of Henry Miller and a host of others....

"His father Jack Kahane had published such luminaries as Henry Miller, Anais Nin, James Joyce, Frank Harris and Lawrence Durrell under his own Obelisk imprint in the 1930's. After World War II, Girodias began to accumulate a crew of American and British writers living in Paris to produce what became know as "dirty books" under his Traveller's Companion series. These small green paperbacks were written in English and sold mainly to American servicemen and tourists who helped to "distribute" them throughout the world. But mixed in with the erotic titles were works which were to become some of the most important literature in the poat-war era. J.P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man, Pauline Reage's Story of O, William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch, Terry Southern's Candy, works by Samuel Beckett, Henry Miller, Raymond Queneau, Jean Genet and Georges Bataille rounded out the Olympia list. Girodias was also the first to publish Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. The twp had a long running feud over the book, some of which was played out in the pages of Evergreen. Girodias' article, Lolita, Nabokov and I was first published in Evergreen in September of 1965 (#37). Nabokov replied in Evergreen #45 (1967) in his article Lolita and Mr. Girodias. Girodias had the last word in his Letter to the Editor, June 1967 (#47). After the censorship barriers were broken in the U.S. and in Europe, Griodias moved Olympia to New York City where it remained until its demise in 1973. Maurice Girodias died in 1990. "