Horror Classics Book Club - THE UNCENSORED PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

For our February meeting of the Horror Classics Book Club, we will be covering The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. While many have engaged with The Picture of Dorian Gray personally or in academic spaces, fewer have ecountered this earlier version of Oscar Wilde's landmark text-- without the vast redactions made by his editors, who feared societal backlash.

Come prepared to share your thoughts during our lively discussion around the fire.

More about this edition:

More than 120 years after Oscar Wilde submitted The Picture of Dorian Gray for publication in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, the uncensored version of his novel appears here for the first time in a paperback edition. This volume restores all of the material removed by the book’s first editor.

Upon receipt of the typescript, Wilde’s editor panicked at what he saw. Contained within its pages was material he feared readers would find “offensive”–especially instances of explicit homosexual content. He proceeded to go through the typescript with his pencil, cleaning it up until he made it “acceptable to the most fastidious taste.” Wilde did not see these changes until his novel appeared in print. Wilde’s editor’s concern was well placed. Even in its redacted form, the novel caused public outcry. The British press condemned it as “vulgar,” “unclean,” “poisonous,” “discreditable,” and “a sham.” When Wilde later enlarged the novel for publication in book form, he responded to his critics by further toning down its “immoral” elements.

Wilde famously said that The Picture of Dorian Gray “contains much of me” Basil Hallward is “what I think I am,” Lord Henry “what the world thinks me,” and “Dorian what I would like to be–in other ages, perhaps.” Wilde’s comment suggests a backward glance to a Greek or Dorian Age, but also a forward-looking view to a more permissive time than his own repressive Victorian era. By implication, Wilde would have preferred we read the uncensored version of his novel today.

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The Twisted Spine, 306 Grand Street, Brooklyn, United States

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