Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Picture of Dorian Gray: An Annotated, Uncensored Edition

The Picture of Dorian Gray: An Annotated, Uncensored Edition

Wilde, Oscar
Frankel, Nicholas

Hardcover

Classic Fiction

Publisher Price: $55.00

ISBN10: 0674057929
ISBN13: 9780674057920
Publisher: Belknap Press
Published: Apr 11 2011
Pages: 304
Weight: 2.15
Height: 1.20 Width: 9.40 Depth: 9.60
Language: English

The Picture of Dorian Gray altered the way Victorians understood the world they inhabited. It heralded the end of a repressive Victorianism, and after its publication, literature had--in the words of biographer Richard Ellmann--a different look. Yet the Dorian Gray that Victorians never knew was even more daring than the novel the British press condemned as vulgar, unclean, poisonous, discreditable, and a sham. Now, more than 120 years after Wilde handed it over to his publisher, J. B. Lippincott & Company, Wilde's uncensored typescript is published for the first time, in an annotated, extensively illustrated edition.

The novel's first editor, J. M. Stoddart, excised material--especially homosexual content--he thought would offend his readers' sensibilities. When Wilde enlarged the novel for the 1891 edition, he responded to his critics by further toning down its immoral elements. The differences between the text Wilde submitted to Lippincott and published versions of the novel have until now been evident to only the handful of scholars who have examined Wilde's typescript.

Wilde famously said that Dorian Gray contains much of me Basil Hallward is what I think I am, Lord Henry what the world thinks me, and Dorian what I would like to be--in other ages, perhaps. Wilde's comment suggests a backward glance to a Greek or Dorian Age, but also a forward-looking view to a more permissive time than his own, which saw Wilde sentenced to two years' hard labor for gross indecency. The appearance of Wilde's uncensored text is cause for celebration.

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