I am a little lost. How did we get onto the subject of Dorian Gray?
“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book,” wrote Oscar Wilde in the preface to the 1891 edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray. “Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”
Apparently there were three editions of this book published. One of these may have been X Rated at the time.
According to Nicholas Frankel, editor of The Picture of Dorian Gray: An Annotated, Uncensored Edition:
When Wilde’s typescript of the novel arrived on [editor J.M.] Stoddart’s desk, he quickly determined that it contained “a number of things which an innocent woman would make an exception to,” as he explained to Craige Lippincott, while assuring his employer that The Picture of Dorian Gray would “not go into the Magazine unless it is proper that it shall.” He further guaranteed Lippincott that he would edit the novel to “make it acceptable to the most fastidious taste.”