by Oscar Wilde
But in 1891 Wilde followed these lines with the crucial sentence, “It would kill this monstrous soul-life, and without its hideous warnings, he would be at peace.” Again Wilde felt that his 1890 wording had been too ambiguous: the new wording eliminates any suggestion that “freedom” implies salvation, and instead reinforces a straightforward, morally conventional reading whereby Dorian strikes the portrait so as to quiet the “soul-life,” with its “hideous reminders” of his criminality.
These changes to the ending confronted head on the criticisms, made publicly in 1890, that Dorian Gray was an immoral book. They were dedicated to proving, as Wilde had claimed to the press in 1890, that “it is a story with a moral” and that “Dorian Gray, having led a life of mere sensation and pleasure, tries to kill conscience, and at that moment kills himself” (Complete Letters, p. 430). To some degree, they are consistent with the suggestion made by George Lock, publisher of the 1891 book version, that in revising the novel Wilde should “depict the misery in which [Dorian] ends his days” so as to “counteract any damage . . . done” by the novel’s appearance in Lippincott’s. Wilde’s changes to the ending were designed, in other words, to increase Dorian’s monstrosity and to eradicate any suggestion, inherent in the 1890 version, that Dorian’s final act was motivated by moral self-revulsion and by the lingering pangs of a tortured conscience. By eliminating hints of remorse on Dorian’s part, Wilde sharpened the reader’s dissociation with him, eliminating lingering shreds of sympathy that the reader might still have for Dorian in the moments before he strikes the portrait.
24. In August 1889 Stoddart journeyed to London to make arrangements with Ward, Lock, and Company for distribution of Lippincott’s in Britain and also to secure British authors for the magazine. As Arthur Conan Doyle relates in his Memories and Adventures (1924; rpt. Oxford University Press, 1989), Stoddart commissioned stories from both Wilde and Conan Doyle during a dinner at London’s Langham Hotel on August 30, 1889. (Stoddart’s contract with Conan Doyle, formalized at Conan Doyle’s insistence on the same date as the dinner, specifies “a story consisting of not less than 40,000 words.” However, in a letter to Wilde dated October 11, 1889, Stoddart countered Wilde’s offer of a story of 30,000 words [Complete Letters, p. 413] with, “we want at least 35,000 words as 30,000 words would be entirely too short.”) Soon after arriving back in Philadelphia, Stoddart wrote to Wilde that he hoped to place Wilde’s story in the January 1890 number and that he was eager to “inaugurate our English venture with it” (J. M. Stoddart, letter to Oscar Wilde, September 18, 1889, J. B. Lippincott Co. Records 1858–1958, Collection 3104, Box 7, Item 5 [letter-book 1889], p. 237, Pennsylvania Historical Society). But Dorian Gray was slow in coming, and Wilde evidently spent the last months of 1889 struggling over a story—“The Fisherman and His Soul”—that eventually totaled 15,000 words and that would appear in his 1891 collection A House of Pomegranates. In mid-November he was “unable to finish” and “not satisfied” with his efforts to date (Complete Letters, p. 414), but in mid-December he announced, “I have invented a new story . . . and I am quite ready to set to work on it” (Complete Letters, p. 416). Possibly Wilde was hard at work drafting Dorian Gray soon after this date. But by early February 1890, Stoddart was getting anxious. On February 7, Stoddart wrote to Wilde’s friend, the cheiromantist Edward Heron-Allen (whose 1888 novella The Suicide of Sylvester Gray dimly influenced Wilde, and whose essay “The Cheiromancy of Today” would appear alongside The Picture of Dorian Gray in the July 1890 number of Lippincott’s): “I have nothing very satisfactory from Oscar Wilde; would it be asking too much of you for you to ask him about his story?” (J. M. Stoddart, letter to E. Heron-Allen, February 7, 1890, J. B. Lippincott Co. Records 1858–1958, Collection 3104, Box 61, Item 2 [foreign letter-book 1889–1894], Pennsylvania Historical Society). That Heron-Allen intervened on Stoddart’s behalf shortly after this date can be inferred from a letter dated February 19 in which Wilde informed Heron-Allen that he would “look in on you and discuss the wicked Lippincott if you are at home” (Complete Letters, p. 424). Around this time, Wilde confessed to an unknown correspondent that he was “overwhelmed with work” (Complete Letters, p. 424) and also, to Aglaia Coronio, that “I am so busy I dare not stir out. Publishers are showing that worms will turn, and the editors of magazines are clamorous” (Complete Letters, p. 425). Evidently Heron-Allen’s intervention was successful, because on March 25 Stoddart thanked Heron-Allen for “punching OW up to his work, as within the last few days we have received word that he has sent his story in” (J. M. Stoddart, letter to E. Heron-Allen, March 25, 1890, J. B. Lippincott Co. Records 1858–1958, Collection 3104, Box 61, Item 2 [foreign letter-book 1889–1894], Pennsylvania Historical Society). See, too, Stoddart’s comment to his London agent, J. Garmeson, on March 25, 1890, “I expect in answer to my telegram of March 20th saying ‘Pay Wilde’ that we will receive a part of the type written copy by next Monday or Tuesday if sent on the steamer leaving on the 22nd” (J. B. Lippincott Co. Records 1858–1958, Collection 3104, Box 61, Item 2 [foreign letter-book 1889–1894], p. 32, Pennsylvania Historical Society).
25. J. M. Stoddart, letter to Craige Lippincott, April 10, 1890, J. B. Lippincott Co. Records 1858–1958, Collection 3104, Box 61, Item 2 [foreign letter-book 1889–1894], Pennsylvania Historical Society.
26. The contents page to Philips’s 1893 collection The Making of a Newspaper (New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s, 1893) lists him as “Literary Editor of the Philadelphia Press” and reveals Philips to have been a leading figure in American journalism at the time. The American edition of the July 1890 number of Lippincott’s, which differs from the British edition in certain respects (though not in its version of Wilde’s novel), lists Philips as copyright-holder. A measure of Stoddart’s confidence in Philips is ascertainable from the “Round-Robin Talks” feature printed in the June 1890 number of Lippincott’s, in which Stoddart self-consciously exposed to his readers the behind-the-scenes processes by which literary manuscripts were collectively adjudicated: “For some months past in various places there have been informal and fraternal meeting of an uncertain number of congenial spirits,” Stoddart declared, their gatherings sometimes prompted by “the advance sheets of a novel” (J. M. Stoddart, “Round-Robin Talks,” Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, June 1890, pp. 889–907). “Many of the participants are known by their writings to the readers of Lippincott’s. . . . Why should not that faction of the public that reads the book reviews of Melville Philips know that their author is a smooth-faced, blue-eyed chap, with a profile like Byron?” At the latest meeting of this group, declared Stoddart, which had evidently taken place in April 1890, “we had gathered to discuss the chances for life of a forthcoming novel which it would be manifestly inopportune to mention now.”
27. J. M. Stoddart, letter to Craige Lippincott, April 22, 1890, J. B. Lippincott Co. Records 1858–1958, Collection 3104, Box 61, Item 2 [foreign letter-book 1889–1894], Pennsylvania Historical Society.
28. J. M. Stoddart, letter to Oscar Wilde, April 22, 1890, J. B. Lippincott Co. Records 1858–1958, Collection 3104, Box 61, Item 2 [foreign letter-book 1889–1894], Pennsylvania Historical Society. That Stoddart is referring here to receipt of the typescript might seem unclear to modern readers. But by this date, the word typescript had not yet come into wide use, and the terms manuscript and typewritten manuscript were commonly applied to what we would now term typescript. See Philo H. Sylvester, “Two Needed New Words,” North American Review, 148 (1889), p. 647.
29. See Wilde’s request to Stoddart, in December 1889, to “let me have half the honorarium in advance—£100” (Complete Letters, p. 416); also his May 1890 comment to a prospective publisher of the book version that “next month there appears in Lippincott’s Magazine a one-volume novel of mine, 50,000 words in length. After three months the copyright reverts to me” (Complete Letters, p. 425). Stoddart declined Wilde’s request for “half the honorarium,” writing to Wilde on December 17 that “I gre
atly regret to be unable to accede to your request for the advancement of the amount. . . . The moment that the manuscript is accepted by our agent in London, the total amount will be paid over to you” (J. M. Stoddart, letter to Oscar Wilde, December 17, 1889, J. B. Lippincott Co. Records 1858–1958, Collection 3104, Box 61, Item 6 [letter-book 1889–1890], p. 279, Pennsylvania Historical Society).
30. The memorandum in which Wilde was to assign and set over his “entire right” in Dorian Gray while simultaneously acknowledging that he had “completed and forwarded the manuscript” and “received payment from [Lippincott’s] London agent Mr. J. Garmeson” survives today only as an unsigned duplicate, dated simply “London . . . 1890.” The original was attached to Stoddart’s letter to Craige Lippincott of April 22, in which Stoddart instructed Lippincott (who was visiting London) to “get him to sign the enclosed authorization, which we are going to use for the purpose of securing copyright here.” In his letter to Wilde of the same date, Stoddart informed Wilde, “I am going to endeavor to secure the American copyright for [Dorian Gray].”
31. J. M. Stoddart, letter to F. C. Baylor, April 25, 1890, J. B. Lippincott Co. Records 1858–1958, Collection 3104, Box 7, Item 6 [letter-book 1890], p. 320, Pennsylvania Historical Society.
32. Stoddart’s anxiety in this respect stemmed from the extensive publicity given to the white slave trade by W. T. Stead’s exposé “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon,” serialized in the Pall Mall Gazette in 1885.
33. In the absence of a text giving his original wording, Wilde used this change as the basis for a further change in the book version, where this phrase is rendered as “a wonderful tragic figure sent on to the world’s stage to show the supreme reality of Love” (The Picture of Dorian Gray: The 1890 and 1891 Texts, ed. Bristow, p. 257).
34. See Bristow, Editorial Introduction, p. lxv.
CHAPTER 1
1. The sound produced by the bass stop of an organ.
CHAPTER 3
1. Our grandparents are always wrong.
CHAPTER 7
1. The consolation of the arts.
CHAPTER 8
1. Large wooden dowry chest, dating from the early Renaissance.
2. Mother-of-pearl.
3. “The Secret of Raoul, by Catulle Sarrazin.”
CHAPTER 9
1. Adjective meaning “replete,” “imbued,” or “charged.”
CHAPTER 10
1. A long, heavy, loose-fitting overcoat with a cape and sleeves.
2. Anglomania.
CHAPTER 12
1. Not yet washed clean of torture.
2. Faun-shaped fingers.
3. Her bosom covered o’er
With pearls, her body suave,
The Adriatic Venus soars
On sound’s chromatic wave.
The domes that on the water swell
Pursue the melody
In clear-drawn cadences, and swell
Like breasts of love that sigh.
My chains around a pillar cast,
I land before a fair
And rosy-pale façade at last,
Upon a marble stair.
APPENDIX
The 1891 Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Picture of Dorian Gray was vilified by British reviewers upon its appearance in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1890. Feeling aggrieved and misunderstood, Wilde appended the following aphorisms to the novel, as a Preface, upon its publication in book form one year later. The novel has since rarely been printed without the Preface, though the Preface has often been printed or anthologized separately, as representing Wilde’s artistic credo.
Many of the aphorisms are based on statements Wilde made in letters to the press defending his novel following publication in Lippincott’s. Others are based on ideas contained in Gautier’s Preface to Mademoiselle du Maupin (1835), a manifesto of “art for art’s sake,” also written in reply to critics who had attacked its author’s moral character. Before attaching them to the novel, Wilde published twenty-three of the aphorisms in the Fortnightly Review in March 1891, where they appeared over his signature under the title “A Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray.” The aphorism “No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything” was added, and one or two others were slightly altered, when the Preface appeared—again over Wilde’s signature—in the book edition of Dorian Gray in April 1891.
Wilde’s Preface is an example of what the critic Gérard Genette terms a “delayed preface” insofar as it serves a “compensatory” purpose and responds “to the first reactions of the first public and the critics” (Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin [Cambridge University Press, 1997], p. 240). However, Genette himself treats Wilde’s Preface as an example of the “preface-manifesto” (p. 228) whereby an author seeks to redefine or overthrow existing artistic conventions. In the breadth of its aims, says Genette, Wilde’s Preface is comparable not merely to Gautier’s Preface to Mademoiselle du Maupin but also to Conrad’s Preface to The Nigger of the Narcissus and to Victor Hugo’s never-completed “philosophical preface” to Les Misérables.
THE PREFACE
The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.
The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.
The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.
Those who find ugly meaning in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.
The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.
No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.
No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.
No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.
Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.
Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor’s craft is the type.
All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.
When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.
OSCAR WILDE.
FURTHER READING
EDITIONS OF WILDE’S WORK
The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, gen. ed. Ian Small (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000–).
As of 2010, the following four volumes have appeared in the Oxford Complete Works:
Vol. 1: Poems and Poems in Prose, ed. Bobby Fong and Karl Beckson, 2000.
Vol. 2: De Profundis; Epistola: in Carcere et Vinculis, ed. Ian Small, 2005.
Vol. 3: The Picture of Dorian Gray: The 1890 and 1891 Texts, ed. Joseph Bristow, 2005.
Vol. 4: Criticism: Historical Critic
ism, Intentions, and the Soul of Man, ed. Josephine M. Guy, 2007.
The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, ed. Robert Ross, 14 vols. London: Methuen, 1908. Except: Vol. 12, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Paris: Carrington, 1908.
The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde, ed. Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart-Davis. New York: Henry Holt, 2000.
Oscar Wilde’s Oxford Notebooks: A Portrait of Mind in the Making, ed. Phillip E. Smith II and Michael S. Helfand. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
The Picture of Dorian Gray, ed. Andrew Elfenbein. A Longman Cultural Edition. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007.
The Picture of Dorian Gray, ed. Donald F. Lawler. Norton Critical Editions. New York: Norton, 1988.
Table Talk: Oscar Wilde, ed. Thomas Wright, foreword by Peter Ackroyd. London: Cassell, 2000.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL TOOLS
Beckson, Karl, ed. Oscar Wilde: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970.
———. The Oscar Wilde Encyclopedia. New York: AMS Press, 1998.
Fletcher, Ian, and John Stokes. “Oscar Wilde.” In Anglo-Irish Literature: A Review of Research, ed. Richard Finneran. New York: Modern Language Association, 1976.
———. “Oscar Wilde.” In Recent Research on Anglo-Irish Writers, ed. Richard Finneran. New York: Modern Language Association, 1983.