Nicholas Frankel has done a great service to Oscar Wilde's readers in preparing this new edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray. His introduction and annotations deepen our understanding not only of Wilde the writer but of the political and sexual milieu in which he lived and published. This is the kind of scholarship that reminds us why scholarship matters. -- David Leavitt
Nicholas Frankel has published many books about Oscar Wilde, including Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years, The Short Stories of Oscar Wilde, The Annotated Prison Writings of Oscar Wilde, The Invention of Oscar Wilde, and The Picture of Dorian Gray: An Annotated, Uncensored Edition. He is Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Nicholas Frankel has done a great service to Oscar Wilde's readers
in preparing this new edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray. His
introduction and annotations deepen our understanding not only of
Wilde the writer but of the political and sexual milieu in which he
lived and published. This is the kind of scholarship that reminds
us why scholarship matters.
*David Leavitt*
Frankel's extensive annotations reveal that the homoerotic
qualities of the novel are deeply encoded within it and cannot be
excised by the removal of a few phrases...If the restored text is
interesting primarily as a social document of what was and was not
permissible in England in the 1890s, it poignantly reveals an
author desperately at war with his society and with himself.
*New Republic online*
In pages redolent of fin-de-siecle languor and sparkling with bons
mots, Wilde's only novel raises several seriously troubling
questions: If one could live a life of absolute freedom, would the
result be happiness or a nightmare? How much of our complex selves
do we deny or sacrifice to conventional morality? ...This Harvard
edition of the untouched typescript is thus a necessary acquisition
for any serious student of Wilde's work...After this enthralling
novel has left you shaken and disturbed, look for deeper
understanding in Nicholas Frankel's superb annotated edition.
*Washington Post*
This edition gives us a chance to read Wilde's text in a form as
close as possible to the way he meant it to appear.
*PopMatters*
The Picture of Dorian Gray categorically changed Victorian Britain
and the landscape of literature. An ostentatious, self-confessed
aesthete, known for his wit and intellect, Wilde not only had to
endure his prose being labeled "poisonous" and "vulgar," but also
suffer its use as evidence in the ensuing trial, resulting in his
eventual imprisonment for crimes of "gross indecency." Frankel's
introduction provides a deft preliminary analysis of the novel
itself--exploring etymology and extensive editorial alterations
(both accidental and deliberate)--and offers valuable insight into
the socio-cultural juxtaposition of aristocratic Victorian society
and the London underworld. The original typescript provides the
unique opportunity to examine what was considered acceptable in
both the U.S. and UK at the time...A fine contextualization of a
major work of fiction profoundly interpreted, ultimately
riveting.
*Publishers Weekly (starred review)*
There is a good argument that the published version of the novel is
not quite true to its author's intent or achievement, and Nicholas
Frankel, who teaches English at Virginia Commonwealth University,
has now set things right--and in handsome fashion. He has
skillfully restored Wilde's original version, and in the manner of
other great annotated editions, supplied readers with everything
anyone would need to know about Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian
Gray, and their lives and times...The entire product--novel and
critical/biographical material--makes fascinating reading.
*Weekly Standard*
Like Harvard University Press's other beautiful annotated editions
of classics, this is both handsome and instructive.
*Library Journal*
A richly annotated and illustrated volume edited by Nicholas
Frankel. It is not often that a piece of serious scholarship is
accorded such deluxe treatment, and in this case it is a cause for
real celebration, for Frankel has provided a wealth of supplemental
material and visual matter, as well as a "Textual Introduction" and
a series of notes that explain references and cultural context,
help the reader understand the editing processes, and point out the
passages that were singled out for deletion...This annotated
version [is] a treasure for scholars and for anyone with a serious
interest in Wilde, the 1890s, and Aestheticism.
*Barnes & Noble Review*
Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray may have outraged
Victorian society even more had his editor not deleted sections of
his original text...These passages and others deemed risky 120
years ago now appear for the first time.
*The Times*
Splendid...Profusely illustrated and annotated, the edition's most
interesting feature will be a comparison of the original
hand-emended typescript with the two main published versions, each
of which toned down the novel in a vain effort to avoid the
notoriety that descended on both the work and its
author...Frankel's edition is a major contribution to the studies
of Wilde and of late Victorian legal, sexual, and social
contexts...Required reading for students and scholars of Wilde and
his period.
*Times Literary Supplement*
In this day of Kindles, e-books and tweets, this is truly a
magnificent job of bookmaking. Oversized, lavishly illustrated and
gorgeously presented, Oscar would have loved it. The text is
examined minutely, with a variety of comparisons from various
publications of the novel, as well as Wilde's original
manuscript...The scholarship is both astounding and informative.
The annotator and editor, Nicholas Frankel, easily and effortlessly
places the modern reader in Wilde's time and place, London's late
Victorian Age in London. There is still a tingle to Dorian's story
of endless debauchery while he remains looking pure and innocent
for decades and the painting ages and grows monstrous, reflecting
his sins and crimes. Strangely, the book seems more modern than one
would imagine. Rather than merely a potboiler from two centuries
back, Wilde's genius imbues the story with a strange and haunting
immediacy, and a cautionary tale for us all: Be careful what you
wish for. One could hardly wish for a more beautifully accoutered
book.
*Pittsburgh Examiner*
There is much to be appreciated in this handsome scholarly
edition...Frankel [is] an accomplished guide and this edition an
elegant resource that enables us to admire all the more deeply the
portrait and the artist.
*Books & Culture*
The version that Wilde submitted to Lippincott's [published for the
first time by Harvard University Press] is the better fiction. It
has the swift and uncanny rhythm of a modern fairy tale--and Dorian
is the greatest of Wilde's fairy tales.
*New Yorker*
It's a revelatory exercise to examine the text of Wilde's original
typescript...It yields a deeper understanding of its author and of
the hypocrisy and intolerance of late-Victorian English society
which led to his two-year imprisonment for "gross
indecency."...With this landmark edition we have the opportunity,
until now denied us, to read what the author originally wrote. It
unquestionably belongs on every Wildean's shelves.
*The Australian*
Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray has the distinction of
being one of the few pieces of literature that grew longer by way
of being censored...It's seven chapters longer than his original
version, which now appears for the first time from Harvard
University Press by way of a brilliant scholarly presentation of
the typescript Wilde submitted to the Philadelphia office of
Lippincott's magazine...The typescript (in the UCLA library, but
published for the first time here) is, besides truer to Wilde's
original intentions, a vastly better novel than the one
Lippincott's Monthly Magazine published, say nothing of the much
expanded version England's Ward, Lock and Company brought out the
next year, the one most of us know. To call Wilde's earlier version
leaner would miss the flavor and point of this
aestheticism-drenched work, but it's a swifter, bolder, more
uncompromising, less moralistic and in every respect more affecting
work than its edited, rewritten, or otherwise censored versions.
Who would have thought a scholarly edition would be the one to
have? But everything about Nicholas Frankel's revelatory new
edition of the typescript of The Picture of Dorian Gray is
game-changing. Reading it is like viewing a painting by
Michelangelo--one of the great artists Wilde named while explaining
what he meant by the phrase "the love that dare not speak its name"
(to cheers of applause from some in the gallery) in the 1895 court
trial--returned to its original glory by deeply knowledgeable,
painstaking art restorers. If it did nothing more, Frankel's
exhaustively researched book would be a dream presentation of any
edition of Dorian Gray, lavishly illustrated with relevant art of
the period, including priceless photographs that bring the details
of Wilde's book, amazingly now 120 years old, to vivid life. The
typescript text is larded with footnotes I'm tempted to describe as
being as absorbing as Wilde's writing, except that no one's writing
is more captivating than Wilde's, as Frankel would be the first to
agree...Entry by entry, Frankel's painstaking explication of the
culture Wilde's writing was both a product of, and immeasurably
advanced, makes this dense, brilliant book comprehensible...Once
through this seminal text with all its notes, illustrations, and
explanations, the drive is to go back and re-read the typescript
(easily recognized by its larger typeface) all over again, just
because it's such a terrific book.
*Bay Area Reporter*
We now have an uncensored Dorian, which is very exciting...[It's] a
beautifully produced volume: lots of white space, helpful
annotations, crisp color illustrations and photographs.
*Victorians*
[A] superbly annotated new edition of Wilde's novel.
*London Review of Books*
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
