The Picture of Dorian Gray (Vintage Wilde)

Author(s): Oscar Wilde; Irvine Welsh (Introduction by)

Classics

The Picture of Dorian GrayBy Oscar WildeOscar Wilde's story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is one of his most popular works. Written in Wilde's characteristically dazzling manner, full of stinging epigrams and shrewd observations, the tale of Dorian Gray's moral disintegration caused something of a scandal when it first appeared in 1890. Wilde was attacked for his decadence and corrupting influence, and a few years later the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wilde's homosexual liaisons, trials that resulted in his imprisonment. Of the book's value as autobiography, Wilde noted in a letter, "Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be--in other ages, perhaps."


Product Information

'The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it' The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin on 16 October 1854. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin and Magdalen College, Oxford. He then lived in London and married Constance Lloyd in 1884. Wilde was a leader of the Aesthetic Movement. He became famous because of the immense success of his plays such as Lady Windemere's Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was first published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1890 but was revised in 1891 after moralistic negative reviews. After a public scandal involving Wilde's relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, he was sentenced to two years' hard labour in Reading Gaol for 'gross indecency'. His poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol was published anonymously in 1898. Wilde never lived in England again and died at the age of forty-six in Paris on 30 November 1900. He is buried in Pere Lachaise cemetery where admirers often leave the lipstick marks of kisses on his tomb.

General Fields

  • : 9780099511144
  • : Penguin Random House
  • : Arrow
  • : 0.154
  • : August 2007
  • : 199mm X 131mm X 13mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : February 2018
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Oscar Wilde; Irvine Welsh (Introduction by)
  • : Oscar Wilde; Irvine Welsh (Introduction by)
  • : FC
  • : FC
  • : 208
  • : 208
  • : 823.8
  • : 823.8
  • : English
  • : English
  • : 9-Nov
  • : 9-Nov
  • : Paperback
  • : Paperback