The Picture of Dorian Gray Book

This edition, first published in 1890, was later subjected to various edits and rewrites following the advice of Wilde's peers who found the material too dangerous to publish. The subsequent British edition, containing 6 additional chapters, was to become an underground classic and literary masterpiece. The Picture of Dorian Gray remains Wilde's only novel.

In his introduction, Jeremy Reed contends that this original Lippincott's edition is both radically different from the later version and far more homoerotic. Arguably, it is this version which remains closest to Wilde's initial preconception.

Misogynistic, anarchic, unethical, and overtly homo-erotic, The Picture of Dorian Gray has become a blueprint for subversive fiction and has inspired subsequent literary outlaws such as Jean Genet, William Burroughs and J.G.Ballard. It remains a true classic of renegade literature and, one hundred years on, continues to shock in its disaffiliation from ethics.