‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, Oscar Wilde’s only novel, was first published on both sides of the Atlantic by the American periodical Lippincott’s Monthly Review on 20th June 1890. Not only did this text provoke a heated debate in the British press in the same year, it also became notorious for its being quoted and examined in court in Wilde’s three trials in the spring of 1895. As a story, the novel shows how a young man in a Faustian situation wishes for his portrait to age rather than himself. Steeped in sin, which, however, is alluded to rather than spelt out, ‘Dorian Gray’ for Wilde’s critics and enemies became an image of the author’s own behaviour. – Going back to the typescript of the novel, the editor has restored passages to the text that had been excised or censored by Wilde himself and the editorial committee in America. Danny Morrison has provided a preface placing Wilde in the Irish political context of his own day and beyond.
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