With its frank portrayal of sexuality, Miss Julie has been a controversial play since its inception—even before it was produced onstage. Initially, Strindberg was only able to get the play published, and reviews of this published version were largely negative.

Michael Meyer, in his biography Strindberg, quoted a number of early critics. The play was called "a filthy bundle of rags which one hardly wishes to touch even with tongs" as well as "a heap of ordure ... [with] language that is scarcely used except in nests of vice and debauchery." One critic cited in Meyer's book prophesied that the play "will surely nowhere find a public that could endure to see it " Another said that, in order to write Miss Julie, Strindberg "must.. have been troubled by some affectation of the brain which rendered him ... not wholly normal."

Production of the play was initially...