For this edition, I have chosen
as my copy-texts to use the thirteen-chapter, 1890 edition originally published
in Lippincott’s Magazine, which I
accessed as a PDF through the Simon Fraser University library, as well as
Joseph Bristow’s edition of the 1891 text from the third volume of Oxford
University Press’s collection titled The
Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. Bristow based his edition off of “the
foolscap quarto edition (also referred to as the large-paper edition), which
appeared in a limited print-run of 250 copies” (Bristow lxi). Bristow admits to
making some silent corrections to small errors found in that edition, which he
notes in his textual notes. Luckily, none of these silent emendations fall into
either of the two excerpts with which I am dealing. However, Bristow also
admits that his edition of 1891 is a “collation of manuscripts, a typescript,
annotated sheets from an unbound offprint, and printed versions with textual
authority,” so it is thus difficult to note how much of the text of my edition
is accurate to the first edition of The
Picture of Dorian Gray printed in 1891, and how much is pieced together and
revised by Bristow from other editions. However, although it would have been
preferable to use a first edition—or a fascsimile—of the 1891 text for this
edition, Bristow’s edition was the best one to which I had access.
As mentioned in my Introduction,
in my annotations I have carefully compiled all of the changes and differences
between the 1890 and 1891 texts. However, for the most part, I have ignored
differences of punctuation, though there are few. One of the main difference
between the two texts—which I do not note in my annotations—is the way that
dashes are used; in the 1890 text, a dash is often preceded by a comma (“,—”),
whereas the 1891 removes these commas and shows dashes alone as is more
commonly used in modern texts. Although I have annotated examples of misspelling
and differing spellings between the two texts, I do not annotate the
differences between the American spellings of the 1890 text and the British
spellings of the 1891. With regards to this rule, I have included instances the
difference between the use of “will” and “shall,” as the 1890 consistently uses
the former, while the 1891 consistently uses the latter. This also includes one
example where 1890 uses “won’t” and 1819 “sha’n’t.” Finally, throughout Chapter
VII of the 1890 text, Wilde uses “Hallward” to talk about Basil Hallward in
many places, where in the equivalent chapter in the 1891 text (Chapter IX)
Wilde frequently uses “the painter.” I have noted the first such difference in
my annotations—as it seems to be a very important revision that Wilde made to
the 1891 text as it clearly attempts to dehumanize Basil and emphasize his role
as a painter—but have chosen to exclude all following such variations in the
interest of saving space, as well as out of a desire to avoid excessive
repetitiveness.
As for changes to the text, I
have done my best to transcribe both texts as faithfully as possible, and any
differences between the copy-texts and my edition are purely accidental. I
wanted this edition to present the original texts as purely as possible, though
that has been less possible with regards to the 1891 text, since it was worked
on not only by Wilde and his editors, but also by Bristow. Since my aim was a
pure representation of the original texts, I have also preserved any and all
misspellings, outdated spellings, punctuation, capitalizations, etc.
