The Picture of Dorian Gray — The Companion Edition (eBook)

This is Oscar Wilde's only novel in the text Wilde himself chose: the expanded 1891 book edition — the famous Preface of aphorisms and all twenty chapters, complete and unabridged. Not the shorter magazine text of 1890, which Lippincott's editor cut by some five hundred words before publication without Wilde's full control; the 1891 book is the version Wilde rebuilt, defended in the press, and gave to the world — with the James Vane revenge plot, Alan Campbell, Hetty Merton, and the great expanded Chapter XI that the magazine version does not have.

A painter falls half in love with his sitter; a lord teaches the sitter that youth is the only thing worth having; and a young man, looking at his own portrait, wishes the picture would grow old instead of him. The wish is granted. What follows — a yellow book, eighteen unmarked years, and a portrait locked in an attic keeping the record — is the most perfectly constructed, and most argued-about, cautionary tale of the Victorian age.

Around the novel, a companion written for reading together: an introduction telling the book's double history — the Lippincott's commission alongside Conan Doyle's, the editor's cuts, the scandal, the 1891 expansion, and the shadow the trials of 1895 cast over it, stated factually and briefly; a Who's Who from Dorian, Lord Henry, and Basil to Sibyl and James Vane; explainers on aestheticism and how to read the Preface, on Decadence and Huysmans' "poisonous book," on the Victorian London art world, and on period money and customs; a short life of Wilde; and thirty-two discussion questions in three spoiler-fenced meetings, so the portrait's secret keeps until the novel is ready to show it.

The novel's text is public domain worldwide. All companion material is original to this edition. This is an independent publication, not affiliated with or endorsed by any other edition or adaptation.

Formats: EPUB eBook ($9.99, this listing). Paperback ($14.99) and hardcover ($24.99) follow on KDP; the printable Book Club Kit is available in this store.