ABSTRACT
De Profundis is everybody’s book. One’s opinion of it does not alter the fact that it is read and admired by people who have nothing but loathing for The Picture of Dorian Gray, and little but amused contempt for Intentions. It was put before the world as an ‘explanation’ and accepted more or less as an expression of contrition. With the exception of a very occasional row of periods, there is nothing about it to indicate that it is a fragmentary or incomplete work, or that it has been edited into its present form by the simple process of omitting quite half of what the author really wrote. In his preface Mr. Robert Ross, Wilde’s literaryexecutor, says, ‘I have only to record that it was written by my friend during the last months of his imprisonment, that it was the only work he wrote while in prison, and the last work he ever wrote.’ The parts which have been printed are supposed in the main to be creditable to Oscar Wilde. Of the parts cut out it is charity to say that they are sufficiently discreditable to render the whole ignominious. Posterity can arrive at no other view. The blame, if any, must attach to Wilde rather than to his friends or publishers, who, as they tell us, have acted upon his clear wishes.
