The Triptych of Dorian Gray (1890–91): Reading Wilde’s Novel as Three Print Objects

Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray has the rare distinction of having not only controversial content, but a controversial textual history as well. In fact, the two are inseparable. The prosecutors in Wilde’s trials made use of the fact that Wilde had changed—or ‘purged’, as they put it—m...

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Main Author: Brett Beasley
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée 2016-11-01
Series:Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens
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Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/cve/2978
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author Brett Beasley
author_facet Brett Beasley
author_sort Brett Beasley
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description Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray has the rare distinction of having not only controversial content, but a controversial textual history as well. In fact, the two are inseparable. The prosecutors in Wilde’s trials made use of the fact that Wilde had changed—or ‘purged’, as they put it—many aspects of the novel after its first appearance in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine. But neither they nor the majority of Wilde readers knew that his original typescript had already undergone a great deal of censorship without Wilde’s permission before the novel found its way into print. In this paper I investigate these three texts—the typescript, the magazine version, and the first edition—using both the methods of textual studies and the methods of social and literary history, showing that the various texts of The Picture of Dorian Gray actually embody different arguments about the status of material objects themselves. Wilde’s only novel has long been recognized as a critique of Victorian society, but only by understanding it as social in its material instantiations can we come to understand the full scale and shape of that critique today.
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spelling doaj-art-9625ff41f3cd48729000badb1a4c662b2025-01-30T10:21:47ZengPresses Universitaires de la MéditerranéeCahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens0220-56102271-61492016-11-018410.4000/cve.2978The Triptych of Dorian Gray (1890–91): Reading Wilde’s Novel as Three Print ObjectsBrett BeasleyOscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray has the rare distinction of having not only controversial content, but a controversial textual history as well. In fact, the two are inseparable. The prosecutors in Wilde’s trials made use of the fact that Wilde had changed—or ‘purged’, as they put it—many aspects of the novel after its first appearance in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine. But neither they nor the majority of Wilde readers knew that his original typescript had already undergone a great deal of censorship without Wilde’s permission before the novel found its way into print. In this paper I investigate these three texts—the typescript, the magazine version, and the first edition—using both the methods of textual studies and the methods of social and literary history, showing that the various texts of The Picture of Dorian Gray actually embody different arguments about the status of material objects themselves. Wilde’s only novel has long been recognized as a critique of Victorian society, but only by understanding it as social in its material instantiations can we come to understand the full scale and shape of that critique today.https://journals.openedition.org/cve/2978Wilde (Oscar)censorshipnovelThe Picture of Dorian Graytextual historyeditions
spellingShingle Brett Beasley
The Triptych of Dorian Gray (1890–91): Reading Wilde’s Novel as Three Print Objects
Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens
Wilde (Oscar)
censorship
novel
The Picture of Dorian Gray
textual history
editions
title The Triptych of Dorian Gray (1890–91): Reading Wilde’s Novel as Three Print Objects
title_full The Triptych of Dorian Gray (1890–91): Reading Wilde’s Novel as Three Print Objects
title_fullStr The Triptych of Dorian Gray (1890–91): Reading Wilde’s Novel as Three Print Objects
title_full_unstemmed The Triptych of Dorian Gray (1890–91): Reading Wilde’s Novel as Three Print Objects
title_short The Triptych of Dorian Gray (1890–91): Reading Wilde’s Novel as Three Print Objects
title_sort triptych of dorian gray 1890 91 reading wilde s novel as three print objects
topic Wilde (Oscar)
censorship
novel
The Picture of Dorian Gray
textual history
editions
url https://journals.openedition.org/cve/2978
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