'The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Companion Edition' Presents the Novel Wilde Himself Chose, the Expanded 1891 Book Edition, with the Preface and All Twenty Chapters

The complete 1891 text, not the censored thirteen-chapter magazine version of 1890, with an introduction, a Who's Who, explainers on aestheticism and decadence, and thirty-two discussion questions fenced meeting by meeting

NEW YORK, Oct. 30, 2026, Oscar Wilde's only novel was published twice, and the first time it was not published whole. Commissioned by the American editor J. M. Stoddart for Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, on the same London visit that produced Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four, The Picture of Dorian Gray appeared in the magazine's July 1890 number in thirteen chapters, after the magazine's editor had quietly cut roughly five hundred words, without Wilde's full control. Reviewers attacked even the censored text as poisonous; Wilde answered in the press, and then did something rarer: he took his story back and rebuilt it. The book edition (Ward, Lock & Co., April 1891) expands the novel to twenty chapters, adds the famous Preface of aphorisms, the James Vane revenge plot, Alan Campbell, Hetty Merton, and the great expanded Chapter XI. A new Companion Classics edition, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Companion Edition, presents that 1891 book text complete and unabridged, 78,886 words including the Preface, taken from Project Gutenberg eBook #174 and verified against an Internet Archive scan of an early reprint of the 1891 text (Boni and Liveright). The edition documents the 1890-versus-1891 choice in full: this is the book Wilde chose, not the magazine text his editor cut.

The novel itself needs no advocacy: a painter, Basil Hallward, finishes the portrait of a young man of extraordinary beauty; in the studio, Dorian Gray meets Lord Henry Wotton and hears that youth is the only thing worth having; looking at his own portrait, Dorian wishes the picture might bear the burden of age instead of him, and the wish is granted. An actress, a yellow book, eighteen years that leave no mark on the face the world sees, and a portrait locked in an attic keeping the record: it remains the most perfectly constructed cautionary tale of the Victorian age, and the most argued-about.

Companion material

Around the novel, the companion material, all of it original to this edition, includes an introduction telling the book's double history, the Lippincott's commission and the editor's cuts, the scandal of 1890, the expansion of 1891, and the shadow cast when passages of the novel and the Preface were read against Wilde at his trials in 1895, stated factually and briefly; a Who's Who of twelve entries, from Dorian, Lord Henry, and Basil to Sibyl and James Vane, Alan Campbell, and Hetty Merton; four explainers, covering aestheticism and how to read the Preface's aphorisms, Decadence and Huysmans' "poisonous book," the Victorian London art world, and period money and customs; a short life of Oscar Wilde; a reading schedule; and thirty-two discussion questions, spoiler-fenced across three meetings, so a book club meets the portrait's secret only when the novel is ready to show it.

Book Club Kit

Alongside the book, the Dorian Gray, Book Club Kit offers the edition's discussion material as a printable PDF (21 pages, US Letter) for reading groups: a three-meeting reading plan (the Preface and Chapters I-VII; Chapters VIII-XIV; Chapters XV-XX); the edition's Who's Who and its four explainers in full; all thirty-two discussion questions re-arranged into the three meetings; and the kit's signature activity, "Sort the Preface", twelve aphorisms from the Preface printed as slips to sort into Sincere, Paradox, and Provocation, with no answer key, and a re-sort at the final meeting, after the ending, that is usually the best argument of the season. The kit is available for $7 through the editor's Payhip store: https://payhip.com/horaceharriottjr

Availability

The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Companion Edition is available now as an eBook ($9.99) through Payhip: https://payhip.com/horaceharriottjr, and in The Classics and Companions Shop on the editor's Linktree. Print editions follow on Amazon (paperback, $14.99; hardcover, $24.99). The text is public domain worldwide (Oscar Wilde died in 1900); all companion material is original to this edition. This is an independent publication, not affiliated with or endorsed by any Wilde estate or any screen adaptation.

About the editor

Horace Harriott Jr. is a New York-based author and editor of more than two dozen books, including The Side Hustle Handbook, Master Playbook and The Ultimate Commissary Cookbook. This edition is part of his Companion Classics series of reading-together editions of public-domain classics.

About the book

The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Companion Edition, Oscar Wilde (author), Horace Harriott Jr. (editor). Companion Classics, independently published, October 2026. Text: the expanded book edition (Ward, Lock & Co., London, April 1891), via Project Gutenberg eBook #174, verified against an Internet Archive scan of the Boni and Liveright reprint of the 1891 text; Preface and twenty chapters; 78,886 words including the Preface; interior proof 303 pages, 6 x 9 in.