Which Dorian Gray should you read? Every edition, compared
Dorian Gray was originally published in a magazine, and the editor censored the parts that made Basil’s love interest in Dorian overt. Later Wilde lengthened his story into a novel, and censored it even more. When he was accused of sodomy, and sued his accuser for libel, the book came up as evidence against him – along with documented relationships he had with young men. During this time he spun the details of his own life and the life of the book towards being more about the powerful bonds between men, rather than about homoromantic interest. Eventually Wilde ended up in prison under an English law that was only repealed in 2003. He died three years after his sentence ended due to health complications sustained while serving his labor sentence.
Three Dorian Grays
The typescript, spring 1890. Wilde sent Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine thirteen chapters in April. The editor, J. M. Stoddart, promised his publisher to make it “acceptable to the most fastidious taste” and cut about five hundred words before it was set: every “mistress” (Sibyl Vane and Hetty Merton were both called one), the title and author of the yellow book that corrupts Dorian (Le Secret de Raoul, by Catulle Sarrazin), and the plainest lines between the men. Basil on the portrait, for one: “There was love in every line, and in every touch there was passion.” Wilde first saw the changes in print. The typescript stayed unpublished until 2011.
The magazine, July 1890. On sale from 20 June, the lead story of the number, about 54,000 words. The Daily Chronicle called it “a poisonous book”; the Scots Observer said Wilde wrote “for none but outlawed noblemen and perverted telegraph-boys”; W. H. Smith took the July number off its railway bookstalls. Five years later, at the Queensberry libel trial, Edward Carson read Basil’s confession aloud from this text and called the book that followed “the purged edition.” Wilde: “I do not call it purged.”
The book, April 1891. Ward, Lock & Co., in grey boards lettered by Charles Ricketts, about 79,000 words. Wilde added the preface (“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”), six chapters (III, V and XV to XVIII), split the last chapter in two, gave Sibyl a brother, James Vane, to hunt Dorian, and cut more of what the magazine had kept. This is the text in every paperback, at Gutenberg, and in Chromatics.
What was cut, and by whom
Each passage is printed once, with every word. A line through a word means Wilde cut it for the 1891 book; a dotted line under a word means the book put it in. Every line is checked against Gutenberg #4078 for the magazine and #174 for the book, and against Frankel’s edition for the typescript.
Basil to Dorian, on the portrait
Chapter VII of the magazine, IX of the book. The passage Carson read in court.
“It is quite true that I have worshipped you with far more romance of feeling than a man usually gives to a friend. Somehow, I had never loved a woman. I suppose I never had time. Perhaps, as Harry says, a really ‘grande passion’ is the privilege of those who have nothing to do, and that is the use of the idle classes in a country. Well, Dorian, from the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I quite admit that I adored you madly, extravagantly, absurdly. I was dominated, soul, brain, and power, by you. You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream. I worshipped you. I was grew jealous of every one to whom you spoke. I wanted to have you all to myself. I was only happy when I was with you.”
In the typescript the opening ran “than a man should ever give to a friend. Somehow I have never loved a woman.” The magazine’s editor softened it to the words above before it was printed; Wilde then cut the whole opening for the book.
Basil to Lord Henry, chapter I
“I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I shall be sorry for having said. I give myself away. As a rule, he is charming to me, and we walk home together from the club arm in arm, or sit in the studio and talk of a thousand things.”
Basil to Lord Henry, later in the same scene
“Don’t take away from me the one person that makes life absolutely lovely to me, and that who gives to my art whatever wonder or charm it possesses: my life as an artist depends on him.”
Basil, after a quarrel with Dorian
Chapter VII of the magazine, IX of the book.
“Hallward The painter felt strangely moved. Rugged and straightforward as he was, there was something in his nature that was purely feminine in its tenderness. The lad was infinitely dear to him, and his personality had been the great turning-point in his art.”
One date, moved
Chapter X of the magazine, XII of the book.
“It was on the 7th ninth of November, the eve of his own thirty-second thirty-eighth birthday, as he often remembered afterwards.”
Wilde, cross-examined in 1895 on whether the book had been “modified a good deal” after the reviews: “No. Additions were made. In one case it was pointed out to me—not in a newspaper or anything of that sort, but by the only critic of the century whose opinion I set high, Mr. Walter Pater—that a certain passage was liable to misconstruction, and I made one addition.”
Every edition
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Chromatics — the app
The 1891 text, featured and free: the preface and all twenty chapters, with Mark F. Smith’s recording to read along.
Read it if you want to start tonight, not download it.
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The 1891 text, the standard free file, downloaded some 64,000 times a month.
Read it if you want the plain file, for nothing.
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Project Gutenberg #4078, or Wikisource
The 1890 magazine text, thirteen chapters, free.
Read it if you want the story the trial was read from.
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The 1891 text, carefully typeset, free.
Read it if you want a clean ebook.
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Harvard (Belknap), ed. Nicholas Frankel: An Annotated, Uncensored Edition, 2011, and The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray, 2012
The typescript as Wilde sent it: thirteen chapters, the five hundred words back, no preface, no James Vane. The 2011 hardcover is illustrated and annotated; the 2012 paperback is the same text with a shorter apparatus.
Read it if you want what was taken out, after the novel rather than instead of it.
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Norton Critical Edition, 3rd ed. 2019, ed. Michael Patrick Gillespie
Both printed texts, 1890 and 1891, with the reviews, Wilde’s replies to them, and seven essays.
Read it if you want the two printed texts side by side.
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Oxford World’s Classics, ed. Joseph Bristow
The 1891 text as established for the Oxford scholarly edition, with notes on Wilde’s sources and his revisions. Bristow’s 2005 Complete Works volume, for libraries, prints both texts.
Read it if you want the book with notes.
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Penguin Classics, ed. Robert Mighall
The 1891 text, with the 1890 reviews as an appendix.
Read it if you want the paperback on every shelf.
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Broadview, ed. Norman Page, 1998
The 1891 text, with Wilde’s essays, the reviews and the trial as appendices.
Read it if you’re writing a paper on him.
The audiobooks
Most recordings read the 1891 book. Mark F. Smith’s LibriVox recording (2010, nine and a half hours) is the free unabridged standard, and the one in the app. LibriVox also has John Gonzalez’s 2006 reading of the thirteen-chapter magazine text, and later readings by Bob Neufeld and Isabella Garcia. Paid: Russell Tovey for Audible Studios and Ben Barnes for Penguin Classics, both unabridged at about eight and a half hours; Simon Vance for Blackstone, an Audie finalist. Edoardo Ballerini reads Frankel’s uncensored text for Tantor (2021, about seven hours). Stephen Fry’s is abridged.
Quick answers
Which Dorian Gray is the uncensored one?
Nicholas Frankel’s Harvard edition (hardcover 2011, paperback 2012) prints the typescript Wilde sent Lippincott’s, with the five hundred words the editor cut put back. It is the thirteen-chapter magazine story, not the twenty-chapter novel.
What is the difference between the 1890 and 1891 versions?
The 1891 book adds the preface, six chapters and James Vane, and drops lines the magazine had kept, most of them Basil’s about Dorian.
Did Wilde censor the book himself?
Partly. The magazine’s editor cut about five hundred words before Wilde saw a proof. For the 1891 book Wilde cut more on his own, and told the court in 1895 that he had made one addition after Walter Pater warned him a passage was liable to misconstruction.
Is The Picture of Dorian Gray public domain?
Yes, worldwide: Wilde died in 1900. Both printed texts are free at Gutenberg, and the 1891 novel is free, featured, in Chromatics. Frankel’s text is not free; the typescript was unpublished until 2011.
Which should I read first?
The 1891 novel, about 79,000 words. Then Frankel’s, for what was taken out. The magazine text is about 54,000 words.
The Picture of Dorian Gray is featured in Chromatics now with Mark F. Smith’s reading alongside.
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