An easy-to-read Teleny
Did Oscar Wilde write erotica?
Frankly, I find it hard to believe he didn’t.
Did he write Teleny, Or The Reverse of the Medal? At this point, it seems unlikely we’ll ever find a copy of the first draft signed by him. But if you enjoyed Dorian Gray, you’ll probably enjoy the lush prose style of this gay erotic novel. I certainly enjoyed the excerpt I read of it in Pages passed from hand to hand.
It left me wanting more.
So I went searching for the rest. Should be easy, right? Published in 1893, it’s absolutely in the public domain. Yet I couldn’t find any downloadable file of it to put on my eReader (at least none from a site I could trust).
I did find the full text on Wikisource–great if I wanted to read the whole thing online. Or…
Long story short: I cut and pasted the text from Wikisource onto my computer, then formatted it into a PDF file of the sort I’d like to read (with clear page numbers). And if you’re in the mood for a downloadable PDF file of Teleny, here it is for you too:
TELENY
Prefer .mobi or .epub? Those can be downloaded from my Gumroad page here.
After reading more of it, I’m finding myself on board with the theory that this erotic novel was written “round robin” style by Wilde and friends of his–it seems especially plausible because some of the chapters in Teleny quote way more poetry than others.
Yes, poetry. It’s that kind of Victorian gay erotica.
Which should also serve as a CONTENT WARNING: some of the scenes are rather…Victorian (if you’ve ever read a summary of The Pearl, you might get what I’m aiming at?), as is the outlook and style. This book contains, alongside its lush and sensuous delights, some distressing scenes plus topics you probably wouldn’t expect from a modern gay historical novel or romance. These include period-typical misogyny, pressured and/or coerced sex with non-leading characters, heterosexual sex scenes, and death by suicide. The Goodreads reviews also share some specific content warnings.
Paperback edition
There are some versions of Teleny available on Amazon, but the copy I looked at uses em-dashes in place of quotation marks around dialogue. Which, I know that’s a thing, but… So I also uploaded a PDF for print-on-demand publishing, priced as inexpensively as possible. You can find it here and now in my Gumroad store.
UPDATE 2021: Right now some of the Amazon reviews are for a different version, citing typos I know my formatted edition doesn’t have, but I’m not sure how to repair that… Dear reader, if you find typos in my Teleny, can you send me a message so I can correct them? And if you don’t find typos, please consider leaving a review on Amazon to that effect, letting other readers know this edition is good.
My