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 Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray

The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray

Wilde, Oscar
Frankel, Nicholas

Paperback

Classic Fiction

Publisher Price: $19.95

ISBN10: 0674066316
ISBN13: 9780674066311
Publisher: Belknap Press
Published: Aug 13 2012
Pages: 272
Weight: 0.75
Height: 0.77 Width: 5.60 Depth: 8.32
Language: English

Now, for the first time, we can read the version that Wilde intended...Both the text and Nicholas Frankel's introduction make for fascinating reading. --Paris Review

More than 120 years after Oscar Wilde submitted The Picture of Dorian Gray for publication in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, the uncensored version of his novel appears here for the first time in a paperback edition. This volume restores all of the material removed by the book's first editor.

Upon receipt of the typescript, Wilde's editor panicked at what he saw. Contained within its pages was material he feared readers would find offensive--especially instances of explicit homosexual content. He proceeded to go through the typescript with his pencil, cleaning it up until he made it acceptable to the most fastidious taste. Wilde did not see these changes until his novel appeared in print. Wilde's editor's concern was well placed. Even in its redacted form, the novel caused public outcry. The British press condemned it as vulgar, unclean, poisonous, discreditable, and a sham. When Wilde later enlarged the novel for publication in book form, he responded to his critics by further toning down its immoral elements.

Wilde famously said that The Picture of 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 repressive Victorian era. By implication, Wilde would have preferred we read the uncensored version of his novel today.

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