The Picture of Dorian Gray

London: Ward Lock & Co, 1891. First Edition. First printing, without Bowden's name added to the title page imprint, the Preface with Wilde's name at the end in larger, bolder type, and with "nd" for "and" beginning the eighth line from the bottom on page 208. The error was corrected for the second printing, which included the 250 signed copies of the limited edition—copies that, in addition to being the second issue, are literally the second printing. This trade edition is not only earlier than the limited but, when it has its dust jacket, many times rarer. Original white vellum (parchment)-backed boards, former owner's neat name to endpaper, spine slightly faded (from light, not dust), else near fine in the rare dust jacket, with small tears and chips to the spine tips and corners neatly repaired, a bit short (an irregularity with nineteenth-century hand-trimmed jackets), but a charismatic jacket still—integral, clean, and one to be owned with pride. An unequivocal Victorian classic, as great a short novel as has ever been written, and copies in dustjacket must have been dumped in the Bermuda Triangle because they never show up at auction or in the trade. Full morocco case. Wilde was from that atypical minority of great men, those who do not remind us of anyone else. He wrote the best comedies since Shakespeare, mastered paradox, and was the reigning wit of the 1890s, but he became a victim when society forgot that the mouse should never be a juror at the cat’s trial. Dorian Gray was his only novel, and why not? When you write one like this, one is sufficient. It’s undeniably a modern Gothic, and a self-evident Victorian classic, unique in the delicacy of its grim and melancholy metaphor, and it continues to maintain it’s appeal even in our 21st century.