The Picture Of Dorian Gray By Oscar Wilde (Paperback, 2003)

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Oscar Wilde's tale of a Faustian pact in Victorian England The Picture of Dorian Gray is a both a slow-burning Gothic horror & a brilliant philosophical investigation of youth beauty & desire This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction & notes by Robert Mighall Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth & beauty Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton he is drawn into a corrupt double life; indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence The Picture of Dorian Gray was a succes de scandale Early readers were shocked by its hints at unspeakable sins & the book was later used as evidence against Wilde at the Old Bailey in 1895 It has lost none of its power to fascinate & disturb This definitive edition

Includes:: a selection of contemporary reviews condemning the novels immorality & the introduction to the first Penguin Classics edition by Peter Ackroyd Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) son of an eminent eye-surgeon & a nationalist poet was educated in Dublin & Oxford & became the leading exponent of the new Aesthetic Movement His work including short fiction such The Happy Price (1888) his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) gradually won him a reputation which was cemented by his phenomenally successful plays including A Woman of No Importance (1893) An Ideal Husband (1895) & The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) Imprisoned for homosexual acts he died after his release in exile in Paris If you enjoyed The Picture of Dorian Gray you might like Joris-Karl Huysmans' Against Nature (A Rebours) Wilde's real-life inspiration for the novel that slowly corrupts Dorian Gray also available in Penguin Classics