The Picture of Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde’s enduringly popular story of a beautiful and corrupt man and the portrait that reveals all his secrets.
Entranced by the perfection of his recently painted portrait, the youthful Dorian Gray expresses a wish that the figure on the canvas could age and change in his place. When his wish comes true, the portrait becomes his hideous secret as he follows a downward trajectory of decadence and cruelty that leaves its traces only in the portrait’s degraded image. Wilde’s unforgettable portrayal of a Faustian bargain and its consequences is narrated with his characteristic incisive wit and diamond-sharp prose. The result is a novel that is as flamboyant and controversial as its incomparable author.
About The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde’s only novel tells the story of a man consumed by narcissism and hedonism: Dorian Gray, a beautiful youth who possesses a unique painting of himself that accrues only the marks of age and sin for him, leaving his real face perpetually young, fresh, and innocent.
The novel blurs the lines between the Victorian gothic and the fantastic, both celebrating and criticizing the love of life and pleasure that Wilde himself is known for. At the time it was considered so scandalous that Wilde’s editor deleted sections without telling Wilde, and yet it still met with enormous backlash and accusations of moral corruption.
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Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was an Irish writer, poet, and playwright. His novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, brought him lasting recognition, and he became one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era with a series of witty social… More about Oscar Wilde
About Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was an Irish writer, poet, and playwright. His novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, brought him lasting recognition, and he became one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era with a series of witty social… More about Oscar Wilde
