The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde - Softcover

Wilde, Oscar

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1540836177 ISBN 13: 9781540836175

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016

Synopsis

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a philosophical novel by Oscar Wilde, first published complete in the July 1890 issue of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. The magazine's editor feared the story was indecent, and without Wilde's knowledge, deleted roughly five hundred words before publication. Despite that censorship, The Picture of Dorian Gray offended the moral sensibilities of British book reviewers, some of whom said that Oscar Wilde merited prosecution for violating the laws guarding the public morality. In response, Wilde aggressively defended his novel and art in correspondence with the British press, although he personally made excisions of some of the most controversial material when revising and lengthening the story for book publication the following year.

About this title

Review

A lush, cautionary tale of a life of vileness and deception or a loving portrait of the aesthetic impulse run rampant? Why not both? After Basil Hallward paints a beautiful, young man's portrait, his subject's frivolous wish that the picture change and he remain the same comes true. Dorian Gray's picture grows aged and corrupt while he continues to appear fresh and innocent. After he kills a young woman, "as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife," Dorian Gray is surprised to find no difference in his vision or surroundings. "The roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily in my garden."

As Hallward tries to make sense of his creation, his epigram-happy friend Lord Henry Wotton encourages Dorian in his sensual quest with any number of Wildean paradoxes, including the delightful "When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy." But despite its many languorous pleasures, The Picture of Dorian Gray is an imperfect work. Compared to the two (voyeuristic) older men, Dorian is a bore, and his search for ever new sensations far less fun than the novel's drawing-room discussions. Even more oddly, the moral message of the novel contradicts many of Wilde's supposed aims, not least "no artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style." Nonetheless, the glamour boy gets his just deserts. And Wilde, defending Dorian Gray, had it both ways: "All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment."

From the Publisher

Here in one volume are his immensely popular novel, The Picture Of Dorian Gray ; his last literary work, the Ballad Of Reading Goal, a product of his own prison experience; and four complete plays:Lady Windermere's Fan, his first dramatic success; An Ideal Husband, which continued to poke fun at conventional morality; The Importance Of Being Earnest, his finest comedy; and Salome, a portrait of uncontrollable love originally written in French, now in a new translation by Richard Elman. Every selection appears in its entirely--a marvelous collection of outstanding works by the incomparable Oscar Wilde, whom Max Beerbohm so aptly labeled "a lord of language."

Edition details

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1540836177
• ISBN 13: 9781540836175
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 240
• Editor: Benitez Paula