Great edition; the annotations add a lot. ( )

Although I knew the basic premise, the actual way it was told was not at all what I expected and it was extremely gripping. I read part of chapter 1 at the end of March but then picked it up and read the entire rest of it in one sitting. Despite the slightly annoying annotated version, I could not stop reading. It was brilliant and left me thinking. I will be interested in our bookclub discussion.

This is the text of the original manuscript that Wilde wrote, not the edited version that was published.

It was so much better that I ached for him. Many sections were excised or altered by the editors because they had obvious homosexual overtones. They were in the relationship between the artist Basil Hallward and Dorian Gray. (Basil was in love with Dorian. Dorian, of course, was indifferent.)

A passage from Oscar Wilde’s original manuscript

"It is quite true I have worshipped you with far more romance of feeling than a man should ever give to a friend. Somehow, I never loved a woman."

- was replaced with this edited passage:

"From the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence on me."

Many similar sections were edited out or changed for the serialized magazine version. When it was published 2 years later as a novel, Wilde kept those edits and added several chapters to make it a more obvious moral tale because the dense Victorians needed to be reassured that the debauchery they were reading was in fact a tale with a moral.

Allow me to say that there isn’t any actual debauchery in the novel. There are vague references to debauchery among the overly florid descriptions. I can’t imagine what the Victorians would have done with 50 Shades of Grey. Probably whipped, tarred and then hung E.L. James. And it wouldn't be for the bad writing.

Oscar Wilde was a genius born in the wrong age. Or maybe he was born in the right age. He wouldn’t have written the way he did or what he did had he been born in this age. And we would have missed some really marvelous literature.

But he suffered so much. And yet lived so well. In fact, I think what angers me most is that when he lived so well, the Victorians punished him for it and made the last years of his life a hell. It was like a chapter from his novel.

I spent most of the novel wondering if Lord Henry was really speaking Wilde’s thoughts. That the novel was not really a tale of morality, but the voice of Wilde calling out the silliness of the morality.

All the best lines in the book belong to Lord Henry. In fact the best lines in all his work belong to the cynics, the intellectual amoral characters. Of course, Lord Henry is the deus ex machina and is entirely amoral. He never suffers in the book and even Dorian has a hard time really blaming him for more than a moment for his manipulations.

In any case, the irony of the suffering at the end of Wilde’s life at the hands of a society which fully embraced the morality of his tale is tragic and sadly mirrors the morality the novel proclaims.

I read the text version only. I spent about 10 minutes debating buying the version by Frankel, that gives a side by side comparison with contextual notes, but in the end the money and the desire to have my own thoughts before reading someone else’s won out. I still want Frankel’s version.
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Excellent presentation of the original Wilde manuscript, without the Lippincott edits implimented to make it less controversial, and Wilde's own edits and additions intended to limit the negative reactions by critics. Frankel also presents a good overview of how Dorian Gray was used against Wilde in his prosecution of the Marquess of Queensbury for criminal liable, and in Wilde's trial for indecency.

Regarding the annotations of the manuscript transcription itself, these are quite useful and extensive. However, it seems that once the editor decided to show how Dorian Gray contains coded homosexual and homoerotic text, such 'code' seems to appear everywhere. Sometimes a cigarette is just a cigarette, especially if it makes sense in the story without considering the hidden homosexual theme. This, however, is a minor quibble.

Any Wilde fan should read this edition (and don't skip the general and textual introductions).

Os. ( )

The most commonly reprinted version of The Picture of Dorian Gray is the 1891 novel version, which added several chapters but also removed some of the content, of the novella originally published in the July 1890 issue of Lippincott's.  The Lippincott's version has been reprinted from time to time, but never before printed is Wilde's original typescript for the Lippincott's version.  The Lippincott's editors toned down some of the homosexual references in the typescript, and Wilde himself toned down many more for the 1891 version.

Though I think that the editor of this edition, Nicholas Frankel, perhaps overstates the amount of "censorship" that happened (he has a giant, expensive hardcover to sell, after all), this edition still makes for interesting reading.  The cuts are not major, but they are consistent, and it is impossible not see a project of reducing the potentially-scandalous homosexual content of the book as one looks through them.  It is most definitely a worthwhile endeavor, then, for the publication of The Picture of Dorian Gray as Wilde originally intended it to have finally taken place.

In addition, this edition features extensive annotations, which are quite helpful in explaining Wilde's heavily referential work and in placing him in context. (I was pleased to see a couple references to Professor J. Kerry Powell, in whose Miami University seminar on "performativity" I read Dorian Gray some five years ago now.) Also, there are lots of full-color pictures, of people and things mentioned, as well from various adaptations.  It's a beautiful book, and well worth owning simply because of that if nothing else.