Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Picture of Dorian Gray Critical Edition: Original Unexpurgated 1890, 13-Chapter Version
    The Picture of Dorian Gray Critical Edition: Original Unexpurgated 1890, 13-Chapter Version
    The Picture of Dorian Gray Critical Edition: Original Unexpurgated 1890, 13-Chapter Version
    Ebook322 pages7 hours

    The Picture of Dorian Gray Critical Edition: Original Unexpurgated 1890, 13-Chapter Version

    By Oscar Wilde

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    This volume contains the original, overtly homoerotic version of the book that first appeared in 1890. Following the novel is a series of critical reviews of the book along with letters defending his work, which Wilde wrote to the various publication editors. There is also a detailed list of the passages expurgated from this first edition along with an account of Wilde's trial, in which the prosecutor constantly refers, quite naturally, to the original edition in trying to portray Wilde as homosexual. Other material regarding the novel is presented, as well. The foreword by John Cowper Powys is an inspired defense of Wilde himself and the genius of his personality. The edition contains a new introduction by editor Michael Wilson.

    .......... Watersgreen House is an independent international book publisher with editorial staff in the UK and USA. One of our aims at Watersgreen House is to showcase same-sex affection in works by important gay and bisexual authors in ways which were not possible at the time the books were originally published. We also publish nonfiction, including textbooks, as well as contemporary fiction that is literary, unusual, and provocative. Luke Hartwell is an example of the latter. watersgreen.wix.com/watersgreenhouse

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWatersgreen House
    Release dateApr 2, 2015
    ISBN9781311529794
    The Picture of Dorian Gray Critical Edition: Original Unexpurgated 1890, 13-Chapter Version
    Author

    Oscar Wilde

    Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wills Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. He studied at Trinity College Dublin and then at Magdalen College Oxford where he started the cult of 'Aestheticism', which involves making an art of life. Following his marriage to Constance Lloyd in 1884, he published several books of stories ostensibly for children and one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). Wilde's first success as a playwright was with Lady Windemere's Fan in 1892. He followed this up with A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, all performed on the London stage between 1892 and 1895. However Wilde's homosexual relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas was exposed by the young man's father, the Marquis of Queensbury. Wilde brought a libel suit against Queensbury but lost and was sentenced to two year's imprisonment. He was released in 1897 and fled to France where he died a broken man in 1900.

    Read more from Oscar Wilde

    Related to The Picture of Dorian Gray Critical Edition

    Related ebooks

    Classics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Why Utopias Are Dangerous

      Jun 24, 2022

      bigthink.com Nineteenth-century Russian writers were “obsessed” with the idea of utopia, says Tim Brinkhof. They wrote stories and treatises imagining how their own increasingly dysfunctional society could be replaced by one “devoid of suffering or

      1 min read

    • Article

      An Archaeological Inquest

      Sep 1, 2022

      An Archaeological Inquest
      7 min read

    • Article

      Timelessness Trumps Timely

      Nov 26, 2020

      THE LITERARY CRITIC John Carey in 2000 published Pure Pleasure: A Guide to the 20th Century’s Most Enjoyable Books. In it he warned of those who associate reading with “swank and false refinement” and argued for “pure reading-pleasure”. Crucially, fo

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Allure Of Knowledge

      Aug 12, 2021

      TO SEND REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT THE BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR AT DVBARRETT@FORTEANTIMES.COM Mark A Waddell Cambridge University Press 2021 Pb, 232pp, £19.99, ISBN 9781108441650 Reading Mark Waddell’s excellent book brought back to mind the time I gave a tou

      11 min read

    • Article

      A Freudian slip

      Mar 28, 2024

      WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU described someone as “anal”? Denoting a fastidious individual, the adjective relates to terms such as the unconscious, the Oedipus complex and the Freudian slip. The last reveals the source who unites them, the father of ps

      3 min read

    • Article

      Parallel Lives

      Aug 4, 2023

      Parallel Lives
      3 min read

    • Article

      Top 10 Postmodern Books

      Nov 3, 2021

      In 1996 Andrew C Bulhak of Monash University created a computer program called the Postmodernism Generator, which automatically produces imitations of postmodernist writing. “It is a literally infinite source of randomly generated, syntactically corr

      5 min read

    • Article

      Fiction on Trial

      Sep 5, 2023

      Fiction on Trial
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Hunger Artist: Thoreau and the Irony of Performance Art

      Jun 23, 2021

      But he offers an interesting lens through which to view both the hunger artist and Thoreau: while they offer their lives as tragic, the audience always receives them as comic. The post The Hunger Artist: Thoreau and the Irony of Performance Art appea

      13 min read

    • Article

      Spare Us The Wagging Finger

      Oct 26, 2023

      THE SOCIAL HISTORIAN Dominic Sandbrook could recently be found in the Culture section of the Sunday Times reviewing a book called Imperial Island: A History of Empire in Modern Britain by Charlotte Lydia Riley. Sandbrook, who knows his onions, didn’t

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Sense of Sensibility: On ‘The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick’

      Oct 19, 2017

      In Hardwick’s criticism, we encounter an uncondescending intelligence, a humane sensibility, and a forthright independence of mind for which we, in our scatterbrained era, cannot be grateful enough. The post A Sense of Sensibility: On ‘The Coll

      5 min read

    • Article

      Orlando Spirit Of The Age

      Jun 11, 2019

      Orlando Spirit Of The Age
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Adam Wilson

      Dec 21, 2020

      Aerosols aren’t the concern of a brain in a vat. The post A Year in Reading: Adam Wilson appeared first on The Millions.

      2 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Nov 1, 2021

      The afterlife is an infinity of custom shelving, where everything you have ever loved has a perfect place, including things that don’t fit on shelves, like the weeping willow from your parents’ backyard, or an old boyfriend, exactly as he was in your

      9 min read

    • Article

      Hellbent and Hydebound

      Oct 19, 2022

      Where Stevenson’s contemporaries explored specific tensions within the Victorian psyche, 'Jekyll and Hyde' pinned the split personality of the era to the page. The post Hellbent and Hydebound appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Picture of Dorian Gray Critical Edition

    4/5

    173 ratings233 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Loved it. Consistently interesting, though a few of the speeches dragged on as did a few of Wilde's "detailing paragraphs." Though I may not have agreed with everything that was said, overall it was very good, and Wilde is a beautiful writer.
    • 3/5
      I'm glad I finally got around to reading this classic and I'm a little upset that I didn't like it more. I knew the gist of the plot before I read it because of The League of Extraordinary Gentleman (nerd alert) and because it exists everywhere in pop culture. But I was still completely taken aback by how much I disliked the character of Dorian Gray. He was such a vain, pompous, scumbag that could do no wrong. It does beg the question though, would he have turned out the way he had, had it not been for the influence of his two friends who unknowingly set him on this path of self-indulgence? As a young man Dorian's friend paints a wonderful portrait of him and Dorian is so saddened that this painting will always look lovely and beautiful while he is destined to grow old and decrepit. He wishes that the burden of his sins and aging would fall upon the painting instead of himself, and lo and behold they do. After every wrong deed and every passing year, the painting becomes more dastardly and evil. His morality is long since gone and he has no care for how his actions ruin those around him. How long can the painting carry the burden of Dorian's indulgent, sinful, and lately, CRIMINAL ways. Fascinating concept, but there is too damn much dialogue in this book. Still glad I got around to reading it though!
    • 4/5
      I was kind of underwhelmed by this one. Some interesting ideas were brought up, but the story itself wasn't as riveting as I thought it would be.
    • 5/5
      Dorian Gray is a young man with everything--looks, wealth, charm, position in Victorian society. He charms the artist Basil Hallward, who paints his portrait and accidentally introduce him to another friend, Lord Henry Wotten.

      Hallward is a very good artist.

      Wotton is a very bad influence.

      Basil recognizes that Lord Henry says shocking, outrageous things, but doesn't take them seriously and assumes Lord Henry can't possibly believe them himself. But Dorian Gray is barely twenty, He's quite easily led to the point of saying he would give his soul if the portrait instead of him could bear the signs of his sins and his aging, and he remain eternally youthful.

      What follows is the playing out of that wish.

      Basil Hallward is a good man, but also a Victorian gentleman, reluctant to believe negative gossip about his friend, and reluctant to tell another gentleman how to live his life. Lord Henry, on the other hand, is always at hand to whisper poison in Dorian's ear, deriding conventional morality, and extolling the idea that the only morality is a person's own pleasure, defined in the most selfish ways possible. Wilde portrays this with subtlety and effectiveness. He also portrays the social mores of his time and society, without necessarily endorsing them. I don't have Wilde's subtlety and skill; I can't really convey how well he's done this. Social roles are what they are, and everyone around Dorian takes it for granted that this is natural law. Men are superior to women; the upper classes are superior to the lower classes. But while everyone in the book takes that for granted, they don't all act the same way in response to it.

      Lord Henry, though Wilde never said it, seems to me to represent a minion of Satan. This is never heavy-handed. It's a word here and a phrase there; little touches building up to a powerful impression. Grant the premise of what happens with the portrait, and Dorian Gray's corruption is no melodrama; it's a realistic psychological portrait.

      Highly recommended.

      I bought this audiobook.
    • 2/5
      A classic tale of what happens when a man sells his soul.Or doesn't sell it per se, but makes a trade--this fabulous painted portrait will age, and he will stay a young handsome age. And this rich arrogant young man is mean--and as the portrait ages and looks meaner and uglier, he struggles with knowing it is there, he struggles with his own behavior.A very interesting idea, but nearly all the characters are arrogant, wealthy, misogynistic racists. Not a fun read.
    • 3/5
      Overall I enjoyed The Picture of Dorian Gray, it's witty, funny at times and captures the obsession over youth well. At times though the wit became too much and would cause me to lose focus because it was going on for 3 of 4 pages about one not even really related to the story subject. Chapter 11, where it tells what Dorian is up to for the rest of his 20s and early 30, wtf was that? Complete mess. I just started to skim after a few pages of that chapter. I really did like the plot though, from the picture changing and Dorian justifying everything then eventually not caring because he still looked fresh. I really wanted the sailor to kill him though.
    • 5/5
      There's a lot going on here for such a slender book, but I should expect nothing less from Oscar Wilde. It reads a little clunky at the beginning, it's just wit-wit-wit and since it's almost all coming from one character in large paragraphs, it doesn't move as smoothly as one of Wilde's plays. Those sections set the tone for the rest of the book, though. Without them, you wouldn't understand Lord Henry, and without that knowledge the book would be very hard to parse indeed. Although it's a character study of Dorian Gray, or a character drama or something like that, Lord Henry is the inciting incident, the fulcrum of the action, and the most complex character. People are constantly insisting "Oh, you don't believe that awful thing you just said," and he doesn't, but that makes him all the worse. Dorian tells him late in the book, "You would sacrifice anybody, Harry, for the sake of an epigram," and that's the horrible truth of him. I wish we'd had some insight into his opinion of his artwork, aka Dorian Gray's twisted nature, after it was finished, but I suppose we don't really need it, and that might have explained things away too much.Dorian is interesting too, though. The gradual development of his character is really masterful, done partly in implications and partly with stated facts. His self-delusion -- acting as if he's the one who's been wronged when a girl commits suicide because of him, and only deepening in the climax -- is perfectly believable. This is a book that would stand repeated readings and analysis to tease out the different threads and their implications, and I won't try to do that here. I must say, though, I'm quite blown away by how the "picture of Dorian Gray" idea seems like such an archetype now, when it's only famous because of this book. I mean to say, the idea of a man staying young while his picture grows old seems like such a mythical, omnipresent idea, like the idea of a vampire or a werewolf, but it wasn't before this. Having now read the book, I'd say the impact is well-deserved, and reading the book is valuable because of how many themes it involves that other books may not be willing to address. A lot of books shy away from depicting realistic selfishness, but this one doesn't.
    • 2/5
      I never connected with this novel. Probably because I just read "The Importance of Being Earnest," from the very beginning, Lord Henry's aphoristic pronouncements felt forced. In a humorous play they make sense, but here they are awkward and out of place. I don't think the characters or story ever became fully authentic; in the worst parts, they just became abstractions.
    • 1/5
      Absolutely horrid. I had wanted to read this book for a very long time, but it sat on my shelf for many years; I have now determined that that is precisely where it should have stayed. The novel is really a mix of an essay on Morals, Philosophy, Religion, and Art, with the story awkwardly mixed in. I found myself skipping huge sections of Lord Henry's awful sentiments about Life. The only redeeming part of the novel is that instead of embracing his descent into immorality, like so many modern characters seem to do, Dorian Gray is pronouncedly unhappy, and in the end, loses what he has so hoped to preserve.
    • 3/5
      A good book and a pretty easy read. Started out slow and wasn't quite what I expected. I expected a more grisly portrayal and the book was somewhat subtle. It may in fact be a good thing. The ending definitely made up for the dull moments in the story.
    • 5/5
      This book is amazing. I had a hard time picking my favorite quotes because in every page I would find long sentences, numerous expressions, whole paragraphs to underline or highlight! My copy already looks like a coloring book.I loved seeing the Dorian Gray go down and decompose. It was fascinating to me.Oscar Wilde is, of course, the master of epigrams. Some of them I had to read three and four times to understand.
    • 4/5
      Wilde didn't write many novels during his painfully short career; in fact, this is about the only one I can think of. It's incredibly beautiful though, and a very powerful comment about what beauty, and the search for it and conquest over it, can do to people.
    • 4/5
      I can see why this book became/is a classic, but I can't say I really enjoyed reading it. The premise is interesting but completely predictable-- though perhaps just because it has become part of the fabric of our literary culture. I found the relationships between the men to be, uh, well, gay. I know the period and culture were very different but I can't image men speaking to each other like Basil spoke to and about Dorian. I guess my biggest complaint is that there are several long tedious passages, with one extraneous analogy or example after another (the same is true of his Children's stories). It's a great allegory and would probably be more interesting to study than to read for pleasure.
    • 5/5
      What a truly remarkable book! Henry is a wonderful, funny, deep character and Dorian's hubris is captivating. Best book I've read in a long time.
    • 4/5
      Oscar Wilde wrote a great book, but, y'know, I think he might've been full of himself.
    • 4/5
      Lush and sensual language, an extremely delicious (and malicious) wit, characters so well-drawn I could feel distaste and pity creeping over me—I wish Wilde had written more than one novel.
    • 4/5
      Beauty and youth can become a deadly trap
    • 4/5
      Very interesting book, especially for the time period it was written in. The writing style seems very different from the other books I've read from the time period. And the premise of the story based on debauchery with no lawful repercussions probably upset quite a few people. I liked the story. My father was actually named after Dorian Grey, so I've been meaning to read this book for a while to see what inspired my grandmother to use the name. Not that my father partakes in debauchery, of course. :) Actually I don't know why my father was given the name. Anyways, this is a classic I am not just glad to check off the list and have in my reading repertoire. I ended up enjoying the book and purposefully sat and cross-stitched instead of my other plans just so I could finish the book on audio.
    • 4/5
      Q. What's Dorian's least favourite spice?A. Basil. * ba-dum cha* Seriously though, it's an amazing novel. The world just needs to stop doing adaptations and focusing on queer culture IMO.
    • 4/5
      A great story that held my interest to the end, but I couldn't help but feeling that it's a stretched novella rather than a short novel. I think the same story could have been told just as well in half the length.
    • 2/5
      This book probably was not meant to be read by someone like me. Most of the time I just found this book to be too odd (I was mostly half-asleep while reading this, so that could have been a major factor). I didn't like any of the characters in this book, and found myself skipping pages where there were long lists of things that Dorian enjoyed. I liked the moral behind the story but that just couldn't save this book for me. I guess from now on I'll just stick with the kind of books I normally read.
    • 3/5
      Dorian Gray was a young man that had his portrait painted by Basil Hallward. Basil had a "crush" on Dorian and felt that the Dorian's "beauty" and his association with young man was the reason for Basil's new success. While at Basil's, Dorian is introduced to Lord Henry Wotton and is fascinated by the philosophies which embrace hedonism professing the pursuit of beauty and sensory satisfaction are the primary reasons for existence. This leads to Dorian's "bargain with the devil" to have his portrait absorb the ravages of age rather than his own visage. Art seems to be key in this book - the portrait is mandatory to the plot, but then there is the character of Sybil Vane, whom Dorian Gray "loves" except that what he loves is not the girl but the characters that she represents on the stage. When he no longer worships her art, he no longer loves her. Dorian Gray's debauchery is cataloged throughout and the activities that he engages are made apparent by the ravages to the portrait.Knowing to a certain degree what the story was about, the beginning was hard for me to get into. But once the story proceeded to the details, it was more entertaining.
    • 2/5
      I suppose my comments will be considered as heresy by some; however, it is difficult to read a book wherein the author constantly uses three-syllable words when a one-syllable word would have done nicely. Wilde may have had a larger than normal vocabulary; however, if he was trying to impress the reader with his English language skills, he does impress but negatively. In addition, the syntax is often unexpected and non-standard, including the author's prolific use of unnecessary commas, split infinitives, and ending sentences with out-of-place prepositional phrases. Toss in frequent transitions from a third-person narrative to first-person, and back, and the reader is jerked from one view to the other repeatedly. Next negatives are the several hundred references to obscure persons of either fact or fiction and real or imagined places with little or no bearing on the story, coupled with a large smattering of French phrases and the French language, and the result is tedious reading at best.Bottom line is the story is one of debauchery made less than entertaining by the author's verbosity and flights into non-essential-to-the-story eruditeness, much of the latter stretching credulity if intended as a window on 19th century England.
    • 4/5
      I was kind of underwhelmed by this one. Some interesting ideas were brought up, but the story itself wasn't as riveting as I thought it would be.
    • 5/5
      I had tried to read this a few years ago, when I was in high school, liking the idea of the plot, but couldn't get through it at all. Now, being 20, I loved it. True, Wilde takes a few places to go on philosophical tangents with Lord Henry, but I thought they were fabulous. The ideas astounded me, and reading it reminded me of the poisonous book that Dorian reads. In any case, the plot of the book is amazing, almost a side note to the philosophies, and the meaning of the book is dark and obscure. It's amazing. I will definitely be reading it often from now on.
    • 4/5
      While I understand the allegorical importance of the meticulous brushstrokes with which Wilde paints the details of his portrait of Dorian Gray and his language is certainly elegant, there's making a point, then there's overkill, then there's beating a dead horse, then there's roughly 50 pages of this book driving home the same point. Great central conceit, certainly worth reading for Gray's descent into madness, but a bit much.
    • 5/5
      Wow is all I have to say about The Picture of Dorian Gray. I didn't think I would like this book and I was pleasantly surprised with this book. This is the first book I have ever read by Oscar Wilde.The writing in the book was wonderful. The characters words just flow like music as you read the book. I found myself not wanting to put the book down as I was reading. Dorian, Lord Henry and the Artist Harry interact so well with each other. There is a different relationship between all 3 of them and to see the relationships change through the book was enthralling.The ending of the book was quite a surprise to me. When I read it I laughed at how well written the story was and the fact that I never realized the ending until the very last second.I can't wait to read more books written by Oscar Wilde!!
    • 5/5
      I loved this book and all of the characters in it. I couldn't help but being both disgusted and intrigued by Dorian Gray. By the time the book was finished I was quite saddened to have it be over.
    • 4/5
      I cannot say much about this book without giving it away, other than it was stunning. Spectacularly written, although at times I did tend to lose track of what Wilde was talking about when he went off on some loosely-tied-in tangents. This didn't take away from the story at all, however, and I found it very tragic, haunting, and enjoyable. A favorite to add to the shelf for sure.
    • 3/5
      Sometimes you decide that you should make up for having never read any works of Oscar Wilde and learn that this book is far weirder than you ever imagined. The Picture of Dorian Gray is highly melodramatic and is tuned to Victorian era sensibilities of morality. This portrait in this book famously ages while it's subject remains young and beautiful, but the story is not about aging but the representation of Dorian Gray's evil acts in the visage of his picture. I was also surprised about how frank this book is about homosexuality for the time. At any rate, it's a nice surprise to finally read a book you think you know what it's about, only to find yourself very surprised.

    Book preview

    The Picture of Dorian Gray Critical Edition - Oscar Wilde

    THE PICTURE

    OF DORIAN GRAY

    Critical Edition

    Original Unexpurgated 1890, 13-Chapter Version

    By Oscar Wilde

    With a Forword by John Cowper Powys

    An Introduction by Michael Wilson

    And an extensive critical afterward edited by Stuart Mason including eight letters by Oscar Wilde written in defense of his book

    This Watersgreen House Classics Critical Edition edited by Michael Wilson

    London

    © 2015 by Michael Wilson

    A Watersgreen House Classics Edition

    All rights reserved.

    Cover art: Noonday Heat by Henry Scott Tuke (1902)

    This original unexpurgated edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray first appeared on June 20th, 1890, in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine for July. In America, the magazine was published by the J.B. Lippincott Company of Philadelphia; in England, the magazine was issued simultaneously by Messrs. Ward, Lock and Co.

    Oscar Wilde, by John Cowper Powys, was originally published as a chapter of his book Suspended Judgments: Essays on Books and Sensations by G. Arnold Shaw, New York, 1916. Powys dedicated the book to his friend Bernard Price O’Neill.

    Oscar Wilde, Art and Morality: The Picture of Dorian Gray, edited by Stuart Mason, was originally published by J. Jacobs, Edgware Road, W., London, 1908.

    Additional acknowledgements by Stuart Mason appear at the end of this volume. All materials used by permission.

    7.44 x 9.69 (18.898 x 24.613 cm)

    Black and White on White Paper

    ISBN-13: 978-1532705830

    ISBN-10: 1532705832 

    BISAC: Fiction / Gay

    BISAC: Fiction / Classics

    No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission of both the copyright holder and the publisher. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Purchase only authorized editions.

    Watersgreen House, Publishers.

    Watersgreen House is an independent international book publisher with editorial staff in the UK and USA. One of our aims at Watersgreen House is to showcase same-sex affection in works by important gay and bisexual authors in ways which were not possible at the time the books were originally published. We also publish nonfiction, including textbooks, as well as contemporary fiction that is literary, unusual, and provocative.

    Printed by arrangement with KDP Global, LLC, Luxembourg.

    Production and printing locations: Munich, Germany; Chennai, India; Milan, Italy; Tokyo & Sendai, Japan; Madrid, Spain; London, U.K.; and Seattle, Charleston, Little Rock, & San Luis Obispo, U.S.A.

    International copyright secured.

    Visit us at watersgreen.wix.com/watersgreenhouse

    Introduction

    I fear my high school English teacher did me great harm in assigning my class to read Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray as part of what she called her trilogy of terror (the other books in the trilogy were Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Frankenstein). But the harm is not what you might suppose. I felt in no way corrupted by Wilde’s novel. I merely felt let down. As a coming-of-age gay teenager in the 1970s, I was desperately seeking information—any information—about my own kind. I had heard, somehow, that Oscar Wilde was a fellow traveler. But, alas, when I read the book, I found little evidence that Wilde was gay. The teacher made no references to the subject, and the class read the book oblivious to its ever having been controversial.

    We were reading, of course, the expurgated version.

    Later in life I had the same experience with De Profundis. Having heard that this work was Wilde’s defense of the love that dare not speak its name, I was perplexed and not at all delighted to find it nothing of the sort. I was reading, of course, the expurgated version. As with The Picture of Dorian Gray, I did not realize this and did not consider the possibility that another version existed. Thus, while I found The Importance of Being Earnest quite clever in its humor, and found Wilde’s fairy tales good enough, I regarded Wilde on the whole as something of a disappointment, who never clearly stated his attraction to his own sex in his writing.

    This volume contains the original, overtly homoerotic version of the book that first appeared in 1890. Following the novel is a series of critical reviews of the book along with letters defending his work, which Wilde wrote to the various publication editors. There is also a detailed list of the passages expurgated from this first edition along with an account of Wilde's trial, in which the prosecutor constantly refers, quite naturally, to the original edition in trying to portray Wilde as homosexual. Other material regarding the novel is presented, as well. The forword by John Cowper Powys is an inspired defense of Wilde himself and the genius of his personality.

    -- Michael Wilson

    Forword

    by John Cowper Powys

    The words he once used about himself—I am a symbolic figure—remain to this day the most significant thing that can be said of Oscar Wilde.

    It is given to very few men of talent, this peculiar privilege—this privilege of being greater in what might be called the shadow of their personality than in any actual literary or artistic achievement—and Wilde possesses it in a degree second to none.

    My genius is in my life, he said on another occasion, and the words are literally and most fatally true.

    In the confused controversies of the present age it is difficult to disentangle the main issues; but it seems certain that side by side with political and economic divisions, there is a gulf growing wider and wider every day between the adherents of what might be called the Hellenic Renaissance and the inert, suspicious, unintelligent mob; that mob the mud of whose heavy traditions is capable of breeding, at one and the same time, the most crafty hypocrisy and the most stupid brutality.

    It would be hardly a true statement to say that the Renaissance referred to—this modern Renaissance, not less formidable than the historic revolt which bears that name—is an insurrection of free spirits against Christianity. It is much rather a reversion to a humane and classic reasonableness as opposed to mob-stupidity and middle-class philistinism—things which only the blundering of centuries of popular misapprehension could associate with the sublime and the imaginative figure of Christ.

    It is altogether a mistake to assume that in De Profundis Wilde retracted his classic protest and bowed his head once more in the house of Rimmon.

    What he did was to salute, in the name of the aesthetic freedom he represented, those enduring elements of human loveliness and beauty in that figure which three hundred years of hypocritical puritanism have proved unable to tarnish. What creates the peculiar savagery of hatred which his name has still the power to conjure up among the enemies of civilisation has little to do with the ambiguous causes of his final downfall. These, of course, gave him up, bound hand and foot, into their hands. But these, though the overt excuse of their rancour, are far from being its real motive-force. To reach that we must look to the nature of the formidable weapon which it was his habit, in season and out of season, to use against this mob-rule—I mean his sense of humour.

    The stupid middle-class obscurantism, so alien to all humane reasonableness, which, in our Anglo-Saxon communities, masquerades under the cloak of a passionate and imaginative religion, is more sensitive to ridicule than to any other form of attack, and Wilde attacked it mercilessly with a ridicule that cut to the bone.

    They are not by any means of equal value, these epigrams of his, with which he defended intelligence against stupidity and classical light against Gothic darkness.

    They are not as humorous as Voltaire's. They are not as philosophical as Goethe's. Compared with the aphorisms of these masters they are light and frivolous. But for this very reason perhaps, they serve the great cause—the cause of humane and enlightened civilisation—better in our age of vulgar mob-rule than more recondite "logoi."

    They pierce the hide of the thickest and dullest; they startle and bewilder the brains of the most crass and the most insensitive. And it is just because they do this that Wilde is so cordially feared and hated. It was, one cannot help feeling, the presence in him of a shrewd vein of sheer boyish bravado, mingled—one might go even as far as that—with a dash of incorrigible worldliness in his own temper, that made his hits so effective and wounding.

    It is interesting, with this in mind, to compare Wilde's witticisms with those of Matthew Arnold or Bernard Shaw. The reason that Wilde's lash cuts deeper than either of these other champions of rational humanism, is that he goes, with more classical clearness, straight to the root of the matter.

    The author of Thyrsis was not himself free from a certain melancholy hankering after categorical imperatives, and beneath the cap and bells of his theological fooling, Shaw is, of course, as gravely moralistic as any puritan could wish.

    Neither of these—neither the ironical schoolmaster nor the farcical clown of our Renaissance of intelligence—could exchange ideas with Pericles, say, or Caesar, without betraying a puritanical fussiness that would grievously bewilder the lucid minds of those great men.

    The philosophy of Wilde's aesthetic revolt against our degraded mob-ridden conscience was borrowed from Walter Pater, but whereas that shy and subtle spirit moved darkly and mysteriously aside from all contact with the vulgar herd, Wilde, full of gay and wanton pride in his sacred mission, lost no opportunity of flaunting his classic orthodoxy in the face of the heretical mob.

    Since the death of Wilde, the brunt of the battle for the spiritual liberties of the race has been borne by the sterner and more formidable figure of Nietzsche; but the vein of high and terrible imagination in this great poet of the Superman sets him much closer to the company of the saints and mystics than to that of the instinctive children of the pagan ideal.

    Oscar Wilde's name has become a sort of rallying cry to all those writers and artists who suffer, in one degree or another, from the persecution of the mob—of the mob goaded on to blind brutality by the crafty incentives of those conspirators of reaction whose interest lies in keeping the people enslaved. This has come about, in a large measure, as much by the renown of his defects as by reason of his fine quality.

    The majority of men of talent lack the spirit and the gall to defy the enemy on equal terms. But Wilde while possessing nobler faculties had an undeniable vein in him of sheer youthful insolence. To the impertinence of society he could oppose the impertinence of the artist, and to the effrontery of the world he could offer the effrontery of genius.

    The power of personality, transcending any actual literary achievement, is what remains in the mind when one has done reading him, and this very faculty—of communicating to us, who never saw him or heard him speak, the vivid impact of his overbearing presence—is itself evidence of a rare kind of genius. It is even a little ironical that he, above all men the punctilious and precious literary craftsman, should ultimately dominate us not so much by the magic of his art as by the spell of his wilful and wanton individuality, and the situation is heightened still further by the extraordinary variety of his works and their amazing perfection in their different spheres.

    One might easily conceive an artist capable of producing so clean-cut and crystalline a comedy as The Importance of Being Earnest, and so finished and flawless a tragedy as Salome, disappearing quite out of sight, in the manner so commended by Flaubert, behind the shining objectivity of his flawless creations. But so far from disappearing, Oscar Wilde manages to emphasise himself and his imposing presence only the more startlingly and flagrantly, the more the gem-like images he projects harden and glitter.

    Astoundingly versatile as he was—capable of producing in Reading Gaol the best tragic ballad since The Ancient Mariner, and in Intentions one of the best critical expositions of the open secret of art ever written at all—he never permits us for a second to lose touch with the wayward and resplendent figure, so full, for all its bravado, of a certain disarming childishness, of his own defiant personality.

    And the fact remains that, perfect in their various kinds though these works of his are, they would never appeal to us as they do, and Oscar Wilde would never be to us what he is, if it were not for the predominance of this personal touch.

    I sometimes catch myself wondering what my own feeling would be as to the value of these things—of the Soul of Man, for instance, or Intentions, or the Comedies, or the Poems—if the unthinkable thing could be done, and the emergence of this irresistible figure from behind it all could be drastically eliminated. I find myself conscious, at these times, of a faint disturbing doubt; as though after all, in spite of their jewel-like perfection, these wonderful and varied achievements were not quite the real thing, were not altogether in the supreme manner. There seems to me—at the moments when this doubt arises—something too self-consciously (how shall I put it?) artistic about these performances, something strained and forced and far-fetched, which separates them from the large inevitable utterances of classic genius.

    I am ready to confess that I am not sure that this feeling is a matter of personal predilection or whether it has the larger and graver weight behind it of the traditional instincts of humanity, instincts out of which spring our only permanent judgments. What I feel at any rate is this: that there is an absence in Wilde's writings of that large cool spaciousness, produced by the magical influence of earth and sky and sea, of which one is always conscious in the greater masters.

    No gentleman, he is said to have remarked once, ever looks out of the window; and it is precisely this never looking out of the window that produces his most serious limitations.

    In one respect I must acknowledge myself grateful to Wilde, even for this very avoidance of what might be called the magical element in things. His clear-cut palpable images, carved, as one so often feels, in ebony or ivory or gold, offer an admirable relief, like the laying of one's hand upon pieces of Hellenic statuary, after wandering among the vague mists and beached margents.

    Certainly if all that one saw when one looked out of the window were Irish fairies with dim hair drifting down pallid rivers, there would be some reason for drawing the curtains close and toying in the lamp-light with cameo-carved profiles of Antinous and Cleopatra!

    But nature has more to give us than the elfish fantasies, charming as these may be, of Celtic legend—more to give us than those brown fauns and hoofed Centaurs and milk-white peacocks, which Wilde loves to paint with his Tiepolo-like brush. The dew of the morning does not fall less lightly because real autumns bring it, nor does the wide aerial landscape of our human wayfaring show less fair, or its ancient antagonist the salt estranging sea less terrible, because these require no legendary art to endow them with mystery.

    Plausible and full of significance as these honeyed arguments in Intentions are—and fruitful as they are in affording us weapons wherewith to defend ourselves from the mob—it is still well, it is still necessary, to place against them the great Da Vinci saying, Nature is the Mistress of the higher intelligences.

    Wilde must be held responsible—along with others of his epoch—for the encouragement of that deplorable modern heresy which finds in bric-à-brac and what are called "objets d'art" a disproportionate monopoly of the beauty and wonder of the world. One turns a little wearily at last from the silver mirrors and purple masks. One turns to the great winds that issue forth out of the caverns of the night. One turns to the sun and to the rain, which fall upon the common grass.

    However! It is not a wise procedure to demand from a writer virtues and qualities completely out of his rôle. In our particular race there is far more danger of the beauty and significance of art—together with all its subtler and less normal symbols—perishing under crude and sentimental Nature-worship, than of their being granted too large a place in our crowded house of thought.

    After all, the art which Wilde assures us adds so richly to Nature, is an art which Nature makes. They are not lovers of what is rarest and finest in our human civilisation who would suppress everything which deviates from the common track.

    Who has given these people—these middle-class minds with their dull intelligences—the right to decide what is natural or unnatural in the presence of the vast tumultuous forces, wonderful and terrible, of the life-stream which surrounds us?

    The mad smouldering lust which gives a sort of under-song of surging passion to the sophisticated sensuality of Salome is as much an evocation of Nature as the sad sweet wisdom of that sentence in De Profundis—Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind sorrow there is always sorrow.

    What, beneath all his bravado and his paradoxes, Wilde really sought, was the enjoyment of passionate and absorbing emotion, and no one who hungers and thirsts after this—be he as sensual as the brutish sting itself—can fail in the end to touch, if only fleetingly with his lips, the waters of that river of passion which, by a miracle of faith if not by a supreme creation of art, Humanity has caused to issue forth from the wounded flesh of the ideal.

    It is in his Soul of Man—perhaps the wisest and most eloquent revolutionary tract ever written—that Wilde frees himself most completely from the superficial eccentricities of his aesthetic pose, and indicates his recognition of a beauty in life, far transcending Tyrian dyes and carved cameos and frankincense and satin-wood and moon-stones and Silks from Samarcand.

    It is impossible to read this noble defence of the natural distinction and high dignity of our human days when freed from the slavery of what is called working for a living, without feeling that the boyish bravado of his insolent wit is based upon a deep and universal emotion. What we note here is an affiliation in revolt between the artist and the masses. And this affiliation indicates that the hideousness of our industrial system is far more offensive than any ancient despotism or slave-owning tyranny to the natural passion for light and air and leisure and freedom in the heart of man.

    That Oscar Wilde, the most extreme of individualists, the most unscrupulous of self-asserters, the pampered darling of every kind of sophisticated luxury, should thus lift up his voice on behalf of the wage-earners, is an indication that a state of society which seems proper and inevitable to dull and narrow minds is, when confronted, not with any mere abstract theory of Justice or Political rights, but with the natural human craving for life and beauty, found to be an outrage and an insult.

    Oscar Wilde by pointing his derisive finger at what the gross intelligence of our commercial mob calls the honourableness of work has done more to clear our minds of cant than many revolutionary speeches.

    An age which breeds a world of uninteresting people whose only purpose in life is working for their living is condemned on the face of it. And it is just here that the association between your artist and your labouring man becomes physiologically evident. The labourer shows quite clearly that he regards his labour as a degradation, a burden, an interruption to life, a necessary evil.

    The rôle of the capitalist-hired preacher is to condemn him for this and to regret the departure from the scene of that imaginary and extremely ridiculous figure, the worker who took pleasure in his work. If there ever have been such people, they ought, as Wilde says, to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Any person who enjoys being turned into a machine for the best part of his days and regards it with pride, is no better than a blackleg or a scab—not a scab in regard to a little company of strikers, but a scab in regard to the human race; for he is one who denies that life in itself, life with all its emotional, intellectual and imaginative possibilities, can be endured without the gross, coarsening, dulling anaesthetic of money-making toil.

    This is the word that the social revolution wanted—the word so much more to the point than discourses upon justice and equality and charity. And it is precisely here that the wage-earners of our present system are in harmony with the intellectuals.

    The wage-earners, or those among them who have in them something more than the souls of scabs, despise and loathe their enforced labour. The artist also despises the second-rate tasks set him by the stupidity and bad taste of his middle-class masters.

    The only persons in the community who are really happy in their life's work, as they fantastically call it, are those commercial ruffians whose brutal, self-righteous, puritanical countenances one is swamped by—as if by a flood of suffocating mediocrity—in the streets of all our modern cities.

    Oscar Wilde is perfectly right. We are living in an age when the world for the first time in its history is literally under the rule of the stupidest, dullest, least intelligent and least admirable of all the classes in the community. Wilde's Soul of Man is the condemnation—let us hope the effective condemnation—of this epoch in the journey of the race.

    The odium which France—always the protector of civilisation—has stamped upon the word bourgeois is no mere passing levity of an irresponsible Latin Quarter. It is the judgment of classic taste—the taste of the great artists and poets of all ages—upon the worst type of person, the type most pernicious to true human happiness, that has ever yet appeared upon the planet. And it is this type, the commercial type, the type that loves the money-making toil it is engaged upon, which rules over us now with an absolute authority, and creates our religion, our morality, our pleasures, our pastimes, our literature and our art.

    Oscar Wilde must be forgiven everything in his gay impertinence which may jar upon our more sensitive moments, when one considers what he has done in dragging this great issue into the light and making it clear. He shows that what we have against us is not so much a system of society or a set of laws, as a definite and contemptible type of human character.

    Democracy may well appear the most hopeless and lamentable failure in the government of men that history has ever known—but this is only due to the fact that the working classes have until now meekly and mildly received from the commercial classes their notions as to what democracy means.

    No one could suppose for a moment that such a thing as the puritanical censorship of art and letters which now hangs, like a leaden weight, round the neck of every writer of original power, would be thrust upon us by the victims of sweatshops and factories. It is thrust upon us, like everything else which is degrading and uncivilised in our present system, by the obstinate stupidity and silly sentiment of the self-righteous middle class, the opponents of everything that is joyous and interesting and subtle and imaginative. It is devoutly to be hoped that, when the revolution arrives, the human persons who force their way to the top and guide the volcanic eruption will be such persons as are absolutely free from every kind of middle-class scruple.

    There are among us to-day vigorous and indignant minds who find in the ugliness and moral squalor of our situation, the unhappy influence of Christ and his saints. They are wrong. The history of Oscar Wilde's writings shows that they are wrong.

    It is the self-satisfied moralist who stands in the way, not the mystic or the visionary. They spoil everything they touch, these people. They turn religion into a set of sentimental inhibitions that would make Marcus Aurelius blush. They turn faith into pietism, sanctity into morality, and righteousness into a reeking prurience.

    After all, it is not on the strength of his opinions, wise and sound as these may be, that Wilde's reputation rests. It rests on the beauty, in its own way never equalled, of the style in which he wrote. His style, as he himself points out, is one which seems to compel its readers to utter its syllables aloud. Of that deeper and more recondite charm which lies, in a sense, outside the sphere of vocal articulation, of that rhythm of the very movements of thought itself which lovers of Walter Pater catch, or dream they catch, in those elaborate delicately modulated sentences, Wilde has little or nothing.

    What he achieves is a certain crystalline lucidity, clear and pure as the ring of glass upon glass, and with a mellifluous after-tone or echo of vibration, which dies away upon the ear in a lingering fall—melancholy and voluptuous, or light and tender as the hour and the moment lead.

    He is at his best, or at any rate his style shows itself at its best, not in the utterances of those golden epigrams, the gold of which, as days pass, comes in certain cases to look lamentably like gilt, but in his use of those far-descended legendary images gathered up into poetry and art again and again till they have acquired the very tone of time itself, and a lovely magic, sudden, swift and arresting, like the odour of myrrh, aloes, and cassia.

    The style of Wilde is one of the simplest in existence, but its simplicity is the very apex and consummation of the artificial. He uses Biblical language with that self-conscious preciosity—like the movements of a person walking on tiptoe in the presence of the dead—which is so different from the sturdy directness of Bunyan or the restrained rhetoric of the Church of England prayers. There come moments when this premeditated innocence of tone—this lisping in liturgical monosyllables—irritates and annoys one. At such times the delicate unction of his naïveté strikes one, in despite of its gravity, as something a little comic; as though some very sophisticated and experienced person suddenly joined in a children's game and began singing in a plaintive tenderly pitched voice—

    "This is the way we wash our hands, wash our hands, wash our hands—

         This is the way we

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1