ABSTRACT
Wilde published the volume of essays entitled Intentions in 1891. The idea had been germinating since July 1889. He had approached William Blackwood about the possibility of printing a volume to include ‘The Portrait of Mr W.H.’, published that same month in Blackwood’s Magazine (Letters, p. 405). Said volume did not materialize, however, and when Intentions eventually came out, it was shorn of ‘The Portrait of Mr W.H.’. Instead, it included only the essays ‘Pen, Pencil and Poison’ and ‘The Truth of Masks’, and the dialogues ‘The Critic as Artist’ and ‘The Decay of Lying’.2
