Poorly received by Victorian society at the time due to its scandalous homoerotic undertones, The Picture of Dorian Gray, the one and only novel written by author and play-write Oscar Wilde, has since become a symbol of the romantic literary movement- a shining example of art for art’s sake and a beloved star of classic queer literature.

Wilde was well known in Victorian literary circles in the late 1800s for his wit and extravagant style, and in 1890, he was commissioned to write a novel by J. B. Lippincott, to be published in their monthly magazine. What followed was The Picture of Dorian Gray. Beautiful flowery prose that uses ten words when one will suffice, lavish descriptions of sunrooms and smoking jackets, and barely concealed references to Victorian homosexuality.

To this day, Wilde’s book continues to resonate with many young readers, with his creative and playful language telling a story within a story of love, beauty and repressed sexuality. When you combine his unique prose with the harsh reality that Wilde was later convicted and imprisoned for being gay, his work becomes more than simply beautiful writing. It becomes an iconic example of the struggle for LGBTQIA+ representation in literature, and a little beacon of hope that even in the Victoria era, queer stories could still find the audience that needed them, and that sometimes, despite the hatred and oppression, beauty can shine through.

But, as Emmet Asher-Perrin brought to my attention in their article for the Tor collection: Celebrating the Books that Queered Us, the book we were holding dear is not the book we thought it was.

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The darker side of editing

It turns out that when Wilde first sent his manuscript to Lippincott’s for publication, vast portions of the story were cut and changed by the magazine’s editor without Wilde’s knowledge or approval. This included changing Wilde’s original spelling and grammar choices, but mainly concerned cutting Wilde’s more ‘explicit’ queer references to make the story less scandalous, less ‘offensive’, and overall, less gay.

There is a complete discussion on the exact passages that were edited, and under whose hand the edits were made, in the preface to The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray, which, without burying the lede, I thoroughly recommend reading for anyone interested in the discussion of literary censorship. And without rewriting Nicholas Frankel’s well-researched and detailed essay, it’s safe to say that the edits were many.

It was commonplace at the time for publishers to make minor edits without the prior approval of their writers, as physical manuscripts were expensive and time-consuming to mail around the world, but it’s the extent to which Stoddart (the magazine’s editor) cut Wilde’s work, the reason for his edits, and how heavy-handedly he tried to remove Wilde’s original themes, that marks this process as more than simply editing. This was censorship.

The end result, an amalgamation of edits that Wild had no choice but to accept, was still poorly received on first publication, so when Wilde was asked to revise and expand the novella in 1891 into a full novel, he was forced to continue the editing process, this time in his own hand.

One could argue that the extended edition of Dorian Gray should, therefore, show us Wilde’s original intentions for the book and remove any concerns about non-consensual edits, as he could surely revert any edits he disagreed with during this second writing session, but this misses two vital points. Firstly, Wilde didn’t have access to his original manuscript when he was revising and expanding Dorian Gray, so he was only able to work from the edited print version of his work.

Secondly, and more importantly for our discussion on self-censorship, Wilde had already received fierce opposition in the press after his story’s first publication, with critics and the public calling him a degenerate and a criminal, forcing him to defend his work in print and again in the infamous preface he later added to the book. The whole process of expanding Dorian Gray into a novel happened under a cloud of negative feedback and homophobic backlash that threatened Wilde’s status, his livelihood, and, later, his life. Told he was vulgar, offensive, poisonous and unclean, that he was writing things better left unsaid, Wilde was forced to cut his own voice, to silence himself and reshape his story to be more palatable for a moralistic Victorian audience. An audience that would later disown him for the very book he was forced to change.

Mandatory morality

One of the most significant changes made to the story was on the insistence of the publisher that Wilde make the ending more morally just.

In the edited version, Dorian finds that a life spent pursuing beauty and indulgence has left him hollow and dead, all vigour and vitality drained as he continues to endure as those he loves perish. In the last scene of the book, when he comes face to face with his sins, Dorian repents his evil ways, admits he was wrong to choose hedonism over morality, and decides to end his life in repentance as a final act of sacrifice.

But in the original version, before any editing by Stoddart or Wilde, the ending is not so cut and dry. Dorian still sins. He follows his passions and rejects morality for morality’s sake, but in that final scene, when he rips the painting down and drives a knife into its heart, he’s not doing so in repentance. He doesn’t fall to his knees and ask for forgiveness. It’s left up to the reader to decide what motivated this final act. Was he overcome with guilt? Was he tired of hiding from his past? Or was he simply bored of a life where his choices had no meaning?

On the one hand, you have a young man, making terrible choices and living a life of sin, who eventually comes to see his ways as evil and repents for his gruesome crimes. On the other hand, you have a young man living the life he wanted to live, rejecting societal pressures and doing what he pleases, dying by his own hand in defiance, never accepting the idea that his life was evil and rejecting the concept of morality itself.

When you consider this distinction in light of Victorian views on homosexuality and the oppressive religious dogma Wilde was forced to endure, the disparity in the endings becomes all the more poignant.

Forcing Dorian to repent, forcing Wilde to stamp a moral ending on the book that leaves the reader in no doubt that Dorian is the villain, changes the intention of the entire story. Dorian’s romances, his relationship with Lord Henry, the negative influence he has over his friends; these become evidence of his evil ways, choices he will later regret instead of a young man simply enjoying life. Dorian is a murderer, a hedonist and an indulgent, but when he’s made into the black-and-white villain, his whole life is easily painted with the same damning brush. The reader no longer has to question Dorian’s motives or intentions. They’re no longer asked how far they, too, would go in the pursuit of beauty. Dorian is the villain, so everything he did was wrong. When in truth, in the story’s original text, the line between ethics and experience is so much more complicated than that.

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Not the story he wanted to tell

Anyone who’s read Wilde’s work knows he was forced to hide his more scandalous ideas behind vague language and implication. You don’t have to be a history major to know that you couldn’t write an openly gay story in Victorian England and expect to be published.

Some scholars argue the inability to come right out and say what he wanted is what makes Wilde’s work so good- he is forced to dance around the subject with delicacy and subtlety rather than just getting to the point. And while I don’t agree with this interpretation, I understand that censorship was part of the process for any Victorian writer who wanted to say something that didn’t adhere to the strict societal standards of the time.

And sidestepping around that censorship is one of the things that made Dorian Gray so iconic. Wilde had found an intelligent, incredibly witty way around the laws that were trying to silence him. His story was an in-joke, a middle finger to the moral elite, his way of telling a queer story while still playing their game. Walking the line he had to walk, but doing it in his own way.

But this only holds true if the story we’re reading is the story Wilde wanted to tell.

Adding morals to appease the right, changing the ending, cutting his voice again and again under a cloud of negative backlash and homophobia- Dorian Gray starts to look less like the darling of Victorian queer literature and more like yet another example of oppressive censorship and societies continued persecution of those that don’t conform.

It’s common knowledge that Oscar Wilde went to prison for being gay- sentenced to two years hard labour after being convicted of ‘gross indecency’ (a Victorian euphemism for being gay)- but the extent that his fiction was held against him in court, how this very book was used to persecute him, as proof of his ‘crimes’, even after he had edited it and removed so much of his voice, adds an even darker twist to this souring tale. Learning how Wilde was later ostracized from Victorian society after his incarceration, how he was shunned from his home and his family, dying penniless and alone, makes you understand a little more clearly the mentality and mindset he must have been under when he was making those edits in 1891. How alone he must have felt. How scared. How misunderstood. That even in the world of fiction, he had to hide. Even in fiction, his characters weren’t allowed to be free.

And the final nail in the coffin? The most heinous disrespect to an author who lost his livelihood, his family, his health and his life for the crime of being who he was: The edited version of his story is still the version you will find in bookshops today. Not Wilde’s original story, not his true heart, not his honest voice, but rather a collection of non-consensual edits, feedback from hostile reception and a rushed attempt to erase the more ‘troubling’ aspects of the book.

The disrespect of his work still being sold in its edited form, with his voice silenced, is saddening as much as it is enraging. A censorship that still endures decades after it was written. The world took everything from him when he was alive, and now we continue to take his words- whitewashed over and ‘amended’, with no remorse for the life lost or recognition of the voice shut out.

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Trust and betrayal

For an editor to remove parts of a story without consent of the writer, because they were ‘too explicit’, because they were worried about the public’s reaction, because they wanted the work to be less queer, less different, less honest- feels like a betrayal of the trust a writer puts in an editor.

When you work with an editor, you give them your art, the product of your hard work, with nervous hands and ask them if it has the potential to become something good. Now imagine they cut it to ribbons, strip it of everything that made it what it was in the first place, and tell you to be grateful they published it at all. They tell you to change the ending, make it more moral, cut the parts out that are you, and make it more readable for the people that hate you. Change your art to suit them. The people that make you hide who you are, that make you ashamed of your voice, your love, your heart. Silence your words so they might hate you a little less. They’ll never accept you, but they might buy your book if you remove everything that sounds like you.

It’s a betrayal of everything art is. Everything art stands for.

I have seen a lot of publications recently calling for work from previously silenced groups, and I guess I am only now starting to understand what silencing really means. That silencing an author isn’t about simply refusing to publish their work- but about a deeper, crueller motive of forcing them to change who they are and what they’re saying to appeal to an audience that already rejects them. Your story is too gay, too black, too feminist. Your characters need to be more moral, more ‘relatable’, more white, more Christian. No one is interested in hearing your voice. They don’t want to know what it’s like to be you, what you think, how you feel, what you care about, or what you love. If you want to be published, you need to look, act, think, feel and sound more like “us”.

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So where does that leave Dorian Gray?

So where does that leave us? Knowing this story we once loved is the product of un-consensual edits and a backpedaling attempt from Wilde to save his career. Must we discard our beloved copies of a book that changed our lives? And if we don’t, are we turning a blind eye to censorship just so we can hold on to a thing we love for a little longer?

Even in its edited form, the Picture of Dorian Grey was still a beacon for queer representation at a time when there was none. And it still stands as a beacon for queer representation today. Young kids still pick up this dusty old Victorian novel and find themselves between the pages. Find the story within the story that won over all our hearts. Even with its forced morality and heterosexual whitewashing, this story still speaks to readers across generations, still found an audience that needed it, and continues to find audiences that need it. The story was altered, yes, but that doesn’t discount the impact it had on so many lives. Doesn’t take away the truths waiting to be found in the text.

As a piece of literature, Dorian Gray is still a masterclass, an inspiring example of the beauty of description and the elegance to be found in the craft of storytelling. A master of words at his finest, painting beauty with a pen and inspiring countless writers to take up the craft and try to create something that speaks to others the way this book spoke to us.

And after having read the original unedited version, the extended novel actually makes many improvements to the original text that can’t be ignored; Wilde’s ideas feel more focused, the story has more direction, the supporting cast are more realized, more purposeful, more relevant. Simply disregarding the novel and reverting back to the unedited version discredits many of these positive changes Wilde made to the book himself that made the story so popular in the first place. That makes this Victorian tale honest, vibrant, and still painfully relevant over 130 years after it was written.

Separating the final version from the effects of censorship and the negative feedback Wilde endured while creating it is impossible. It’s ingrained in every word. It’s hidden in the process. It’s behind the pen before the words even made it to the page. We can’t just weave the two versions together, cut and paste the story into something new, because anything we create will be yet another amalgamation of what we think Wilde wanted to say. Yet another editor deciding what we want the story to be.

The answer, I believe, lies in understanding the contradiction that exists at the heart of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Understanding how this story came to be, the reality that lies under the surface of such a beautiful tale, and seeing the final novel for what it is: A brilliant story and an incredible piece of art, that can both stand as a shining beacon of queer literature and an example of homophobic censorship. Just like Dorian himself, the book is a dichotomy that both celebrates queer fiction and undermines it. That champions queer authors and represents the lengths society will go to to silence their voices.

What did Wilde think of the final version of his story? What would he have left in if he could? What would Dorian Gray have looked like if Wilde had had the freedom to say everything he wanted to say? We’ll never know.

The uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray, though not sold in most high-street stores, is available online, and reading both the edited and original versions gives you a deeper understanding of what the story could have been. Read it. Listen to it. Listen to the things not said. Listen to the raw, and sometimes unpolished, voice of an author who wasn’t allowed to speak his mind, and decide for yourself where you think Wilde would have taken the story if he’d been given the creative freedom he deserved.

Listen to the story of Wilde’s life, the reality of what he endured for giving us the book we would later fall in love with.

Read. And listen. And understand that sometimes beautiful things come from dark places.

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You can still read and love the edited version of Dorian Gray.

As Wilde himself said, there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written, that’s all. And both versions of Dorian Gray are about as well written as you could wish for. But only when we acknowledge and understand our past mistakes can we try to move past them, and I think we owe it to Oscar Wilde, and other authors like him, to acknowledge what was done to his work so we can recognize and notice when it happens again.

We still live in a world where people are silenced every day, where governments ban books because they don’t conform to their view of the world, where people are terrified that fiction will teach them something they don’t want to know. We are not out of the woods yet.

But luckily, there are some corners of the world where the people fighting for change are starting to be heard, where QueerLit publishers are growing and where you can find stories told exactly as the authors wanted to tell them. These are the books we need to save from the fire. These are the books we need to hold close.

So read banned books. Sign as many petitions as you can against literary censorship, and support queer publishers wherever you find them. And when you’re writing, when you’re creating, when you’re sending your work out and waiting with bated breath for someone to find something of worth in your ramblings, beware of self-censorship. Never change your story, your art or your words because you’re worried about how people will react. Never silence yourself, or refrain from speaking the truth because other people don’t want to hear it.

This is the lesson we can take away from Dorian Gray. This is how we can love the story whilst still honouring the man that wrote it.

The world needs more honesty and heart. We need stories that bring us together, and tell us something we didn’t know before. Writers like Oscar Wilde created incredible stories of beauty and love in a time when beauty and love were forbidden. Just imagine what you can create now, in their honour, to show the world their struggle wasn’t in vain.

There are people out there just waiting to find your words and your voice, and hear that they’re not alone.

So go forth and make art for art’s sake. Make people feel. Make people think. And if anyone ever tells you to cut your story apart if you want to be published, to silence yourself to appeal to the masses, channel your inner Wilde, and tell them to go to hell.

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Further Reading:

• A textual history of The Picture of Dorian Gray – Harvard University Press
• The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray – edited by Nicholas Frankel
• Reading the edited version of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray somehow made me more queer – by Emmet Asher-Perrin
• A close reading of the ‘censored’ passages of The Picture of Dorian Gray – by Emily Temple
• Reprint of the original manuscript of Dorian Gray, showing edits in Wilde’s own hand
• Forbidden love: the original Dorian Gray revealed, direct from Oscar Wilde’s pen – by Donna Ferguson