Methuen to a limited public, and that
they have been retained in the fourteenth (separate) edition, of which Mr.
Ross sends me a copy. I possessed only the first edition. I do not want to
part with it, but the fourteenth is a great deal more interesting than the
first. It contains a dedicatory letter by Mr. Ross to Dr. Max Meyerfeld
("But for you I do not think the book would ever have been published"),
and some highly interesting letters written in Reading Gaol by Wilde to
Mr. Ross (which had previously been published in Germany). In the course
of this dedicatory letter, Mr. Ross says: "In sending copy to Messrs.
Methuen (to whom alone I submitted it) I anticipated refusal, as though
the work were my own. A very distinguished man of letters who acted as
their reader advised, however, its acceptance, and urged, in view of the
uncertainty of its reception, the excision of certain passages, to which I
readily assented."
* * * * *
This explains clearly enough the motive for suppressing the passages. But
even after making allowance for the natural timidity and apprehensiveness
of the publishers' reader, I cannot quite understand why those particular
passages were cut out. Here is one of them: "I had genius, a distinguished
name, high social position, brilliancy, intellectual daring; I made art a
philosophy and philosophy an art.
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