'What begins as an alluring fable ends as a full-on modernist nightmare.' - The New Yorker
First published in 1890, The Picture of Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde's only novel. At first the subject of intense controversy, it has endured as a classic for years.
Dorian is a good-natured young man until he discovers the power of his own exceptional beauty. As he gradually sinks deep into a frivolous, glamorous world of selfish luxury, he apparently remains physically unchanged by the stresses of his corrupt lifestyle and untouched by age. But up in his attic, hidden behind a curtain, his portrait tells a different story...
'Nasty and nauseous' - The St. James Gazette
'Wilde made clear from the outset that he wished to show not only the thrills and pleasures of a ruthlessly aesthetic life but also its limits and dangers ... What begins as an alluring fable ends as a full-on modernist nightmare.' - The New Yorker
'Wilde's brilliantly allusive moral tale of youth, beauty and corruption' - The Guardian
'Unclean, poisonous, and heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction.' - The Daily Chronicle of London
'He towered above us all' - Arthur Conan Doyle
'Both a cautionary tale of a life of depravity and sham, and a tender portrait of the aesthetic urge unbridled and spinning out of control ... A dark, supernatural affair, its sparkling wit never completely conceals a Gothic layer that would have done justice to Edgar Allan Poe at his best.' - Irvine Welsh
About the auhor:
Oscar Wilde was known for his acclaimed works including The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest, as well as his brilliant wit, flamboyant style and infamous imprisonment for homosexuality.
Author, playwright and poet, Oscar Wilde was a popular literary figure in late Victorian England. After graduating from Oxford University, he lectured as a poet, art critic and a leading proponent of the principles of aestheticism. In 1891, he published The Picture of Dorian Gray, his only novel which was panned as immoral by Victorian critics, but is now considered one of his most notable works. As a dramatist, many of Wilde's plays were well received including his satirical comedies Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), his most famous play. Unconventional in his writing and life, Wilde's affair with a young man led to his arrest on charges of "gross indecency" in 1895. He was imprisoned for two years and died in poverty three years after his release at the age of 46.
