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Notes
Oscar Wilde, The Letters of Oscar Wilde, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis (1962). Other examples of textual scholarship cited above may be mentioned here: Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, ed. Sarah Augusta Dickson, 2 vols (1956); Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, Original four act version ed. Vyvyan Holland (1957); Oscar Wilde, The Portrait of Mr. W. H. Enlarged Edition, ed. Vyvyan Holland (1958); Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ed. Wilfried Edener (1964). Other works of interest to Wildean scholarship include Abraham Horodisch, Oscar Wilde's "Ballad of Reading Gaol." A Bibliocritical Study (New Preston, Connecticut, 1954); Aatos Ojala, Aestheticism and Oscar Wilde, 2 vols. (Helsinki, 1954-55); Stuart Mason [Christopher Sclater Millard], Bibliography of Oscar Wilde (1914, 1967); E. San Juan, Jr., The Art of Oscar Wilde (1967); L. A. Beaurline, "The Director, The Script, and Author's Revisions: A Critical Problem," Papers in Dramatic Theory and Criticism, ed. David M. Knauf (1969), pp. 78-91.
The revisions and the author's intentions and their effects on the final form of the novel are studied in my own unpublished doctoral dissertation for the University of Chicago, "An Enquiry into Oscar Wilde's Revisions of The Picture of Dorian Gray," 1969.
Horace Wyndham, "Edited by Oscar Wilde," Twentieth Century, 163 (May, 1958), p. 400. Wyndham reports that when the decision to drop Wilde as editor of Woman's World was made, Wilde remarked, "I shall be able to finish a novel, 'The Picture of Dorian Gray,' I have in the stocks." Wilde was replaced as editor of Woman's World in October of 1889. The fact that he contributed nothing further of his own after June of 1889 is an indication that he was given notice before that date. If this inference is correct, and if we may rely on the substantial if not the literal truth of Wyndham's anecdote, we may assume that Wilde had been at work on Dorian Gray before June of 1889.
Morgan Library Manuscript, ll. 186-188. I wish to thank the Pierpont Morgan Library for permission to examine this manuscript and special thanks go to Herbert Cahoon, curator of the manuscript collection, for his generous assistance.
In the quotations given above and below, each line is reproduced as it appears in the manuscript except that I have italicized the repeated elements. The additional examples of copying error given below will show the reader how these passages are distributed throughout the manuscript.
- A. Within the world, as men know it, there was a finer world that only artists know of, — artists of artists, or those to whom the temperament of the artist has been given. Creation within—that is what Basil Hallward had named it, that is what he had attained to. (l. 43.)
- B. — "Then you shall come. And you will come, too, Basil, won't you?" — "Then you and I will — "I can't really, I would sooner not. I have a lot of work to do." — "Well, then, you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray." (l. 51.)
- C. The elaborate character of the frame made the picture extremely heavy, and now and then he put his hand to it so as to help them in spite of Mr. Ashton who had a true tradesman's dislike of seeing a gentleman doing anything useful he put his hand to it so as to help them. (l. 160.)
- D. "Though your sins be as scarlet, yet I will make them white as snow!" Suddenly a wild — "Those words mean nothing to me, now." — "Hush! Don't say that. You have done enough evil in your life, My God! don't you see that damned thing leering at us?" Dorian Gray glanced at the picture, and suddenly a wild feeling of hatred for Basil Hallward came over him. (l. 219.)
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