“Oscar Wilde's Book”: Early American Reviews of The Picture of Dorian Gray

Abstract

Oscar wilde's only novel, the picture of dorian gray, first appeared in the july 1890 issue of the american periodical lippin- cott's Monthly Magazine? While the sometimes acrimonious reception of the novel in Britain has been routinely noted, less scholarly attention has been paid to the reception of Dorian Gray in the United States. Even when scholars allude to the reaction of the press there, they do so almost always as an afterthought—as a way of juxtaposing the novel's censorious reception in Britain with its supposedly more positive reception across the Atlantic. Thus, in the introduction to his definitive edition of Dorian Gray for Oxford University Press, Joseph Bristow comments in a footnote that he has “found no evidence of outright hostility towards The Picture of Dorian Gray in the American press,” before outlining “the trouncing that Wilde … experienced” in Britain“ (ln101). Similarly, in his general introduction to the ”uncensored“ Dorian Gray for Harvard University Press, Nicholas Frankel notes of the novel, ”To be sure, appreciative and sensitive reviews appeared in Britain and America, but a significant segment of the British press reacted with outright hostility, condemning the novel as ‘vulgar,’ ‘unclean,’ ‘poisonous,’ ‘discreditable,’ and ‘a sham’“ (5). In her contribution on Wilde in the series Bloom's How to Write about Literature, Amy Watkin is even more Manichaean: ”Americans loved it,“ she declares. ”English reviewers did not“ (129).