Oscar Wilde’s typescript of his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, remained unpublished until 2011, when it appeared under the title The Picture of Dorian Gray: An Annotated, Uncensored Edition as part of Harvard University Press’s annotated series of classic literary works. Like The Picture of Dorian Gray: An Annotated, Uncensored Edition, this paperback edition is based on the typescript submitted by Wilde to Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1890, whereupon an alarmed J. M. Stoddart, the magazine’s editor, quickly determined the novel, at least in its present form, would offend the sensibilities of his readership. Especially troubling to Wilde’s editor were instances of graphic sexual—especially, homosexual—content he found in the typescript. In consultation with his publishing associates, Stoddart struck words, phrases, and whole sentences from Wilde’s typescript. The introductory essays that follow explain the commercial, social, and legal imperatives that motivated changes to both Wilde’s typescript and the subsequent and expanded book edition of 1891, published by Ward, Lock, and Company. This edition restores all of the material excised by Stoddart and his colleagues.
Literary scholars often speak of publication as a process of collaboration between publishers and authors; however, the reality is often far different. The relations between Victorian journal editors and their authors presumed a sharp imbalance of power, especially where first-time novelists were involved. Thomas Hardy complained in 1890 that “the patrons of literature—no longer Peers with a taste—acting under the censorship of prudery, rigorously exclude from the pages they regulate subjects that have been made . . . the bases of the finest imaginative compositions since literature rose to the dignity of an art.” In the case of Wilde’s novel, the evidence that Stoddart censored it is plain from the sexual and political nature of his deletions, such as his removal of Basil Hallward’s confession: “There was love [for Dorian] in every line [of the portrait], and in every touch there was passion.”
Further evidence can be found in Stoddart’s panicked reaction upon receipt of Wilde’s typescript. “Rest assured that it will not go into the Magazine unless it is proper that it shall,” he told his employer, Craige Lippincott. “In its present condition there are a number of things which an innocent woman would make an exception to. But I will go beyond this and make it acceptable to the most fastidious taste.” Before committing himself to publication, Stoddart assigned Wilde’s typescript to no fewer than five publishing professionals for comment—one of whom he later charged with “picking out any objectionable passages.” Wilde did not see these changes to his novel until after it appeared in print.
American literary critic Elaine Showalter has characterized the milieu in which Wilde lived and wrote as one of “sexual anarchy.” Stoddart’s edits must be seen within the wider context of the sexual paranoia and legal threat apparent in the late 1880s and early 1890s. The circumstances under which Dorian Gray was published are a far cry from those faced by the majority of English-language authors either before or since. The 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act outlawing “gross indecency” between men, the establishment of the National Vigilance Association in 1885 (it successfully brought about a jail sentence for Henry Vizetelly, translator of Emile Zola’s works, in 1889), and the Cleveland Street Scandal of 1889–1890 all served to bring about a heightened atmosphere of paranoia and intolerance, particularly where upper-class and well-educated English homosexuals were concerned. Indeed, Wilde was the chief victim of this climate of repression—as was plain from the jubilation that greeted his imprisonment for gross indecency in 1895. Whether he acknowledged it or not, Stoddart’s hand was directed by the courts.
Literature is an inherently social product, but it isn’t always commensurate with its public face or accepted manifestations, and the processes of publication aren’t always as seamlessly collaborative as literary scholars sometimes imagine. Are the sanitized texts of Osip Mandelstam presented by Soviet editors to be accepted on the grounds that they are collaborative products? Reclaiming works of literature from the censorship they were subject to, often for the duration of their authors’ lifetimes, is not a Romantic endeavor, but rather an effort to reveal the social antagonisms and broader political forces shaping their accepted social face.