Dorian Gray - no. 39

Penguin Books, 1954

Price: 2/ -, but I got it for £1.80 including student discount.

History I've got a walk I do every few weeks - up to Forbidden Planet via Treadwell's occult bookstore, then back to the tube past Orbital Comics and a whole host of antiquarian bookshops. Of which Henry Pourdes is my favourite, and this is my second Dorian from there (the previous one being no. 33)

Look Lovely! It's that iconic Penguin style, with the orange border.

Introduction/appendices Nothing, ignoring a very...tactful author biography on the back cover, the closest it comes to explaining what went on in the 1890s is "flouting of conventional morality". Hmmm.

I've started to wonder what the cutoff date for Dorian Grays is. According to the cover of this, the first Penguin edition of the book was 1949, but I'm not sure if that isn't more to do with the Penguin publishing house. What I mean is: I wonder how big the gap of time, the space of infamy was in which you could not get a copy of the book. Is there one? Say, the very late 1800s, early 1900s - was there a patch where respectable publishing houses wouldn't touch it?

Captured 11-03-09, at about 3 in the afternoon