Dorian Gray - no. 46

A Bantam Classic (1982)

Price: a gift from Friend 2; inside pencil suggests it was sold for $3.

History: Friend 2 returned from America with three rather lovely presents for me.

Look: This copy is distractingly unremarkable - just a photo of it's author on the cover, with the tell-tale words "and Other Writings", it just reeks of "cheap edition". And then...

Introductions/appendices: ...its introduction is written by Richard Ellerman, who wrote the definitive biographical tome on Oscar Wilde. This alone gives it extra spangly value - and again, I have no time to review this introduction now, but I read and enjoyed it.

This edition also contains the Ballad, Lady Windamere, Ideal Husband, Earnest and a new translation of Salome. An interesting idea, but even this can't save it from almost total awfulness. I adore Salome, but as far as I'm concerned, the original line:

One would fancy she were looking for dead things

and the new translation:

She might be seeking for the dead.

are more or less equally bad.

Captured: ?-8-10

Dorian Gray - no. 37

Hamlyn 1983 (complete works)

Price: £1.50

History: got this at the Charity Shop in town. According to stamps inside the book, this used to belong to our local library's School service. Dating complete works is fairly easy, at least approximately, because the complete text of De Profundus was not allowed to be published till after 1960.

Look: I think it is the Victoriana that has given me a suspicion towards books with yellow covers. This is yellow, and it's got one of the Aubrey Beardsley drawings on the front, coupled with a quote about immoral books. It's certainly trying to capitalise on a certain aspect of Oscar Wilde's appeal. The text is very small...but other than that, a lovely copy. under the dustjacket it is peach, which is interesting but not necessarily wrong.

Introduction/appendices: three pages, not very interesting.

Captured: 18-12-2008

Dorian Gray - no. 25

Great Writers Library, 1986

Price: £4.99

History: A birthday present from my aunt and uncle in New Zealand. Maybe I should move there? All of my really nice copies seem to come from there...

Look: gorgeous in every way. The black leather has an evil, medieval feel; the cover image is pleasingly sepia (even if the gent on the right resembles Sgt Andy "your dad sells apples" Wainwright from Hot Fuzz). The thin paper and splotchy text just increases the antique feel.

Introduction/Appendices: None, but my relations sent it with a cutting from the Weekend Herald about a priest who quoted Oscar Wilde in a book entitled Aphorisms for an Anti-Conformist Christian. It sounds pretty exciting to me. It's a fairly good little article, even if a Catholic establishment figure thinking Wilde had something relevant to say isn't exactly what I'd call news. And the journalist makes the mistake of claiming the book's "moral" is drawn from Catholicism, with "the painting clearly stands for the soul steadily stained by sin regardless od outward claims or the appearance of piety". If there is a moral in there, then I have never found it with any certainty, and I'm positive it isn't that simple...

Dorian Gray - no.14

Guild publishing London 1980

Price: Not sure - it was from a quality 2nd hand bookshop.

History: I've no idea when I got this one, so I popped it at the end, but I remember the circumstance. Grandma described three copies she'd found over the phone (this, I realise, is the benefit of mobile phones with cameras...), and this was the only one I was sure I hadn't got.

Look: It's quite pretty - the cover is gold and green, though the spine looks more like silver and green. I've never worked out whether this is just the effect of the light on it. I'd prefer silver though...

Introduction/Appendices: none, but it contains the Happy Prince, Lord Arthur Saville's Crime and the Canterville Ghost.

Dorian Gray - no.12

Penguin Classics 1985

Price: 99p.

History: I'll say this for my island home. What they lack in a decent cinema, they make up for it with the number of people who dislike this novel enough to hand it over to Oxfam. Pity for them they don't enjoy it, of course, but it means I can pick up some really cool ones. Such as this one, which I found on a school trip to the Town Church.

Look: I presume it's meant to be Chapter 13...anyway, I LOVE this cover. Forget what I said about disliking paintings of Dorian; we live in the native land of the hypocrite anyway xD. I'm not sure it would be very enjoyable to read though. It has a library-style sticker on the side of the spine.

Introduction/Appendices: It's Peter Ackroyd's 1985 intro, which personally isn't great.