From LAWLER 188: Wilde cancelled the following line from his original manuscript: "If you set yourself to know life, you will look evil; if you are afraid of life, you will look common."

ZABROUSKI: The homoerotic undertone of this sentence wouldn't have gone unnoticed if it was included in this edition. Though Lord Henry seems to be talking about the changes in appearance through aging, if those lines were included in this edition, Lord Henry could've been implicitly addressing society's view on homosexual relations rather than society's view on physical appearance. The phrase "afraid of life" may suggest being afraid of acting on one's true desires, and the phrase looking "common" may suggest an unwanted submission to a heterosexual relationship.

From LAWLER 186: Wilde changed his word to "influences" in 1891.

From LALWER 185: Added from the original manuscript.

ZABROUSKI: Changed to "Hallward" in 1891.

From LAWLER 184: Wilde added the following epigram in 1891: "It is so tedious a subject that one would have to talk seriously about it."

From LAWLER 184: Deleted in 1891.

From LAWLER 183: The original conclusion of the chapter, cancelled in the manuscript, read: "'I don't suppose I shall care for him, and I am quite sure he won't care for me,' replied Lord Henry, smiling..."

From LAWLER 183: Changed to "who gives to my art whatever charm it possesses: my life as an artist depends on him" in 1891.

ZABROUSKI: Cut in 1891.

ZABROUSKI: Changed to "the feeding of the poor and the necessity for model lodging-houses. Each class would have preached the importance of those virtues, for whose exercise there was no necessity in their own lives. The rich would have spoken on the value of thrift, and the idle grown eloquent over the dignity of labour" in 1891.

ZABROUSKI: Changed to "He pictured to himself with silent amusement" in 1891.

ZABROUSKI: Changed to "in the green lacquer leaves of the ivy" in 1891.

ZABROUSKI: Changed to "Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love:" in 1891.

From LAWLER 182: The following lines were cut from the original manuscript: "I am not afraid of things, but I am afraid of words. I cannot understand how it is that no prophecy has ever been fulfilled. None has I know. And yet it seems to me that to say a thing is to bring it to pass. Whatever has found expression becomes true, and what has not found expression can never happen. As for genius lasting longer than beauty, it is only the transitory that stirs me. What is permanent is monstrous and produces no effect. Our senses become dulled by what is always with us."

ZABROUSKI: ADD SOMETHING HERE

From LAWLER 182: Changed to "What you have told me is quite a romance, a romance of art one might call it, and the worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic" in 1891.

From LAWLER 181: The following lines were cancelled form the manuscript: "Who seems to take a real delight in giving me pain. I seem quite adjusted to it. I can imagine myself doing it. But not to him, not to him. Once or twice we have been away together. Then I have had him all to myself. I am horribly jealous of him, of course. I never let him talk to me of the people he knows. I like to isolate him from the rest of life and to think that he absolutely belongs to me. He does not, I know. But it gives me pleasure to think he does."

From LAWLER 181: Wilde dropped this sentence from the 1891 text together with the phrase "walk home together from the club arm in arm" from the next sentence.

ZABROUSKI: Changed to "Oh, something like, 'Charming boy--poor dear mother and I absolutely inseparable. Quite forget what he does--afraid he--doesn't do anything--oh, yes, plays the piano--or is it the violin, dear Mr. Gray?' Neither of us could help laughing, and we became friends at once" in 1891.

The phrase "engaged to be married to the same man--I mean married on the same day" suggests that Dorian was engaged to a man, and in accidentally sharing that piece of information, Lady Brandon attempts to correct herself. The 1891 text omits that phrase completely, for readers may have pointed out the homosexual undertone in the 1890 edition.

From LAWLER 181: Wilde altered this paragraph in every revision.

ZABROUSKI: In the 1891 version, Wilde wrote, “Because, without intending it, I have put into it some expression of all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never cared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He shall never know anything about it. But the world might guess it, and I will not bare my soul to their shallow prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope. There is too much of myself in the thing, Harry—too much of myself!” In the original manuscript, Wilde had (after "But the world might guess it") "where there is merely love, they would see something evil. Where there is spiritual passion, they would suggest something vile." If Wilde kept those two sentences in, it could be assumed that critics would have used it as fuel for their argument on what constitutes a moral vs immoral book.

From LAWLER 181: Wilde canceled the following at this point from the manuscript: "A curious smile crossed his face. He seemed like a man in a dream."

LAWLER 180: Henry's response in the manuscript is too heavily blotted to read fully, but he protests Basil's being in Dorian's power: "to make yourself the slave of your slave. It is worse than wicked, it is silly. I hate Dorian Gray!" In one stroke, Wilde rid himself of some silly dialogue and removed a clue, perhaps, to the nature of the relationship between Dorian and Basil as a form of homoerotic bondage so fashionable among the English that the French referred to it as le vice anglais.

ZABROUSKI: Wilde added "Some subtle influence passed from him to me, and for the first time in my life I saw in the plain woodland the wonder I had always looked for and always missed" to the end of this paragraph in 1891.

LAWLER 180: From the original manuscript, Wilde deleted "and as he leaned across to look at it, his lips touched my hand. The world becomes young to me when I hold his hand..." In 1891, Wilde added another sentence here (which I transcribed above) emphasizing Dorian's influence over Basil's art.

ZABROUSKI: Deleted in 1891.

ZABROUSKI: Changed to "a model or a sitter" in 1891.

ZABROUSKI: Changed to "sketch from him" in 1891.

From LAWLER 180: "Lad" substituted for "boy" here and in several other places from the original manuscript. Additionally, Wilde removed "Through twenty summers have shown him roses less scarlet than his lips" from the manuscript.

ZABROUSKI: Changed to "He is absolutely necessary to me" in 1891.

From LAWLER 180: This change omits the homoerotic overtones.

From LAWLER 180: Was moved by Wilde to another context (in Chapter IX) in 1891.

From LAWLER 180: Wilde revised the dialogue above in 1891, leaving out "worship" and muting the homoerotic overtones.

ZABROUSKI: Changed to "The masses" in 1891.

ZABROUSKI: Changed to "orders" in 1891.

From LAWLER 179: Wilde altered details here and in the preceding two paragraphs in 1891.

From LAWLER 178: Another epigram Wilde touched up a little in 1891.

ZABROUSKI: Changed to "I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects" in 1891.

ZABROUSKI: Wilde changed this sentence and added more dialogue in the 1891 text.

"She either explains them entirely away, or tells one everything about them except what one wants to know."

"Poor Lady Brandon! You are hard on her, Harry!" said Hallward, listlessly.

"My dear fellow, she tried to found a salon, and only succeeded in opening a restaurant. How could I admire her? But tell me, what did she say about Mr. Dorian Gray?"

From LAWLER 178: Wilde made several stylistic changes in the preceding eight lines in the 1891 text.

ZABROUSKI: Changed to "Hallward shook his head" in 1891.

ZABROUSKI: Changed to "'Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one,' said the young lad, plucking another daisy" in 1891.

From LAWLER 178: Removed from 1891 text.

From LAWLER 178: Was originally "beauty had so stirred me."

From LAWLER 177: Deleted in 1891.

From LAWLER 176: Several stylistic changes made here in 1891.

ZABROUSKI: Changed to "A grasshopper began to chirrup by the wall, and like a blue thread a long thin dragon-fly floated past on its brown gauze wings" in 1891.

From LAWLER 176: Wilde deleted "that had charmed all the poets from Chaucer to Tennyson" from his manuscript and modified the style of the epigram following 1891.

From LAWLER 176: Wilde changed the original "passion" to "feeling."

From LAWLER 176: Wilde canceled the phrase "taking hold of his hand" from the original manuscript.

From LAWLER 176: This sentence and Henry's "I must" deleted in 1891.

From LAWLER 177: Opening lines of this paragraph deleted in 1891.

ZABROUSKI: "and... speak" changed to "and ensconced themselves on a long bamboo seat that stood in the shade of a tall laurel bush" in 1891.

From LAWLER 175: "shaking... off" deleted in 1891.

From LAWLER 175: "laying... shoulder" deleted in 1891. This is the first of many such deletions or rewrites eliminating descriptions of physical contact suggestive of homoerotic behavior.

From LAWLER 175: Changed to "art" in 1891.

From LAWLER 175: Original manuscript had "to dog the steps of kings."

From LAWLER 174: Changed to "a mode of exaggeration" in 1891.

From LAWLER 174: Changed to "as a natural consequence" in 1891.

From LAWLER 174: Original manuscript had "and yet, you are quite right about it. It is my best work."

ZABROUSKI: Added in from the original manuscript.

From LAWLER 174: Wilde wrote Coulson Kernahan, editor of the revised edition of Ward, Lock and Company, asking that he "look after my 'wills' and 'shalls' in proof," explaining that his "usage was not Celtic English" (Letters 289).

From LAWLER 174: This last sentence was omitted in 1891.

ZABROUSKI: Refined to "through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile" in 1891.

From LAWLER 173: Changed to "round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine," in 1891.

From LAWLER 173: Changed to "as was his custom" in 1891.

ZABROUSKI: Removed "silent" before "slanting beams" from the original manuscript.

ZABROUSKI: Replaced "him" from original manuscript.

ZABROUSKI: Replaced "we are" from the original manuscript.

ZABROUSKI: Replaced "did" from the original manuscript.

ZABROUSKI: Changed to "round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine," in 1891.

ZABROUSKI: Refined to "through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile" in 1891.

From LAWLER 173: Changed to "as was his custom" in 1891.

ZABROUSKI: Removed "silent" before "slanting beams" from the original manuscript.

ZABROUSKI: Replaced "him" from original manuscript.

ZABROUSKI: Replaced "did" from the original manuscript.

ZABROUSKI: Replaced "we are" from the original manuscript.

From LAWLER 179: J.M. Stoddart, Lippincott's editor changed the original reading "live with their wives," removing an expression inadmissible to the American public. Wilde let these and similar changes stand even though they are clearly inferior to the original.