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. 41

Broadview Literary Texts

Price: £4.99, technically, but it was a gift

History: I remain endebted to my friends and family for my awesome, and growing, collection. Friend 4 bought this for herself in the first weeks of university because she forgot her own copy, and passed it on when she got home. It's a lovely beastie.

Look: I strongly approve. It's otherworldly, this book - funny colours, funny fonts, but somehow it works. The text is very small, but the pages are very soft. I like it. It is also nowhere near this red in real life, the red is less bright.

Introductions/appendices: This would be a great copy for someone who wants to read a little further than the text, without drowning in academia. There are brief footnotes throughout for the weirder references, a nice introduction, and a series of short appendices (extracts from other relevant works, some trial excerpts, something on A Rebours, and an interesting page on "langour"). If you want to do a proper uni-level essay on the novel, Number 27 is still the one to look for, but this would be perfectly servicable for GSCE/A-Level, or people who just want a little more context.

You can have a flick through this on Google Books, including a better peep at the cover.

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. 29

The Viking Press, 1946

Price: Not sure

History: missing the title of Oldest Copy in the collection by a whisker (well, a year...), this was a present from grandma and one of my faves.

Look: it's thick, with a lovely "OW" on the cover. As it is both quite an old copy, and a thick one, reading is difficult for fear of damaging it. Which is a pity, because...

Introduction/appendices:...because it bills itself as a "portable libray" book - Salome, Earnest, the expurged De Profundis, a selection of poems, letters, reviews and anecdotes pack this into a book I'd love to carry around with me. Shame I'm too worried about damaging it. The introduction by Richard Aldington is pleasantly wry - calling him the "greatest English - pardon! Irish - writer", skeetering off the sex question as quickly as possible and criticising some popular Wilde myths in a way that does still make me think. It also contains a few brilliant 40's generalisations about homosexuality...