The Picture of Dorian Gray (Norton Critical Edition) 2nd edition by Wilde, Oscar (2006) Paperback

by Oscar Wilde

What if you never aged, but your soul bore the scars of your sins?
Oscar Wilde’s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is a dark, provocative tale of vanity, temptation, and moral decay. Dorian Gray is a young man of unmatched beauty who, after a careless wish, finds himself blessed—or cursed—with eternal youth. His portrait, hidden away from the world, becomes a chilling mirror of his inner corruption. As Dorian plunges deeper into a hedonistic lifestyle, the painting grows more grotesque, bearing the burden of his immoral acts.
Wilde’s dazzling prose and biting wit take aim at Victorian society’s obsession with appearances, exposing the danger of choosing surface over substance. Both a philosophical reflection and a suspenseful gothic drama, this novel remains one of the most haunting explorations of the cost of living without conscience.
Daring, stylish, and unforgettable, The Picture of Dorian Gray challenges readers to how far would you go to stay young forever?

Paperback

About the author

Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts.
Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. In his youth, Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, he read Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles.
Wilde tried his hand at various literary activities: he wrote a play, published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on "The English Renaissance" in art and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he lectured on his American travels and wrote reviews for various periodicals. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skill, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into what would be his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Wilde returned to drama, writing Salome (1891) in French while in Paris, but it was refused a licence for England due to an absolute prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Undiscouraged, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London.
At the height of his fame and success, while An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) were still being performed in London, Wilde issued a civil writ against John Sholto Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The libel hearings unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and criminal prosecution for gross indecency with other males. The jury was unable to reach a verdict and so a retrial was ordered. In the second trial Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour, the maximum penalty, and was jailed from 1895 to 1897. During his last year in prison he wrote De Profundis (published posthumously in abridged form in 1905), a long letter that discusses his spiritual journey through his trials and is a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. On the day of his release, he caught the overnight steamer to France, never to return to Britain or Ireland. In France and Italy, he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life.

Reviews

[alli · Rating 4 out of 5]

like a nerd i really enjoyed reading both the original and edited publications side by side. boy oh boy does oscar have things to say!

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

oh my god that last paragraph.

these three win the most toxic trio award. the joy I felt when Lord Henry said he got divorced?? fantastic. good for her. get outta there victoria

[Nettles]

Does anyone know if this version makes it clear what was censored?

ISBN: 1803986409

[Megan Wick · Rating 5 out of 5]

ran this back for my literature & sexuality class. still a banger as always

[Holly Perna · Rating 5 out of 5]

finally got back into reading this and absolutely loved it. definitely one of the more easy classics to read

[aj ☆ · Rating 5 out of 5]

'There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear, and whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to escape.'

this is my second time reading this book, yet my first time reading the 1891 rerelease. Wilde is such a fantastic writer and this story is his masterpiece.

[Elizabeth Woods · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still good.

[Noah Gerrits · Rating 4 out of 5]

First half is agonizing if you don’t like having a think
It gets better in the second half trust the process!

[Behruz Sotiboldiev · Rating 3 out of 5]

The idea of exchanging the soul for an eternal youth may seem the interesting one, but in the case of this novel the story becomes the most tedious of all. True, the period of time must be taken into consideration, but there are many more novels which had been written even earlier one can find more captivating and far more interesting than the Picture of Dorian Gray.

[naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

excellent collection of dorian gray criticisms, analyses and background. very informative and covers a lot of bases regarding the novel. both versions of the novel included notes that enhanced the experience. i’d recommend to anyone interested in learning more about dorian gray—and the influences behind it, along with oscar wilde.

[Sare · Rating 3 out of 5]

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