Maurice Girodias was a famous book publisher during the 20th century. He started Olympia Press in Paris in 1953, and for more than a decade he published a lot of mediocre erotic and pornographic litterature, but also authors like Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita), Samuel Beckett (Watt), Henry Miller (Plexus), William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch), Jean Genet, Paul Ableman, Marquis de Sade and others. Nabokov's Lolita caused a long feud between the two, which was eventually won by Nabokov.

Girodias went bankrupt in Paris in 1966. After that he moved to New York where he started Olympia Press again in 1967. He went bankrupt again in 1972, and in 1974 he was sentenced for a number of crimes and was deported from the USA.

Maurice Girodias died in 1990.

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