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The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray – Annotated & Illustrated
📖 A Timeless Classic, Restored to Its Full Original Glory
Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of the most celebrated novels of all time—a haunting tale of vanity, morality, and the dark desires lurking within the human soul. But did you know that the version most readers know is heavily censored?
📜 This Special Edition Restores Wilde’s Original, Unedited Text
First published in 1890, The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray includes all of Wilde’s original passages that were deemed too controversial for Victorian audiences. Experience this masterpiece as Wilde intended, with every provocative and thought-provoking detail intact.
✨ What Makes This Edition Unique?
✔ Complete Uncensored Text – Unlike most editions, this book presents the novel exactly as it was originally written.
✔ Exclusive Introduction & Annotations – Gain deeper insight into Wilde’s themes, inspirations, and literary brilliance.
✔ Classic Yet Modern Formatting – Professionally designed for an effortless reading experience.
💡 Perfect for fans of gothic fiction, Victorian literature, and philosophical novels. If you love thought-provoking classics that explore beauty, corruption, and moral decay, this is the edition for you.
⚡ Rediscover Wilde’s Masterpiece Today! Click "Buy Now" to experience The Picture of Dorian Gray like never before.
Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of the most celebrated novels of all time—a haunting tale of vanity, morality, and the dark desires lurking within the human soul. But did you know that the version most readers know is heavily censored?
📜 This Special Edition Restores Wilde’s Original, Unedited Text
First published in 1890, The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray includes all of Wilde’s original passages that were deemed too controversial for Victorian audiences. Experience this masterpiece as Wilde intended, with every provocative and thought-provoking detail intact.
✨ What Makes This Edition Unique?
✔ Complete Uncensored Text – Unlike most editions, this book presents the novel exactly as it was originally written.
✔ Exclusive Introduction & Annotations – Gain deeper insight into Wilde’s themes, inspirations, and literary brilliance.
✔ Classic Yet Modern Formatting – Professionally designed for an effortless reading experience.
💡 Perfect for fans of gothic fiction, Victorian literature, and philosophical novels. If you love thought-provoking classics that explore beauty, corruption, and moral decay, this is the edition for you.
⚡ Rediscover Wilde’s Masterpiece Today! Click "Buy Now" to experience The Picture of Dorian Gray like never before.
270 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 23, 2025
13 people are currently reading
30 people want to read
About the author
Oscar Wilde
4,140 books38.7k followersOscar 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.
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.
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June 12, 2025
As an English major (undergrad) with a master’s in English education, I am mystified that this book bypassed me. However, I believe I was gifted this delay and that in reading The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray at this point in my life (52), my appreciation for Wilde’s work of art is boundless. This text is everything that human existence is and strives to be and strives to suppress. Wilde’s central characters seem to represent the tripartite soul of Plato, the tripartite personality of Freud playing out humankind’s fall from grace. Unparalleled in its ability to capture the all-encompassing range of human experience through the craft of literary genius, The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray forces readers inward, illuminating the potentialities of the human soul’s deep descent and does so through a character for whom one may still retain shreds of empathy. A masterpiece.
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