Le Portrait de Dorian Gray - Collector

by Oscar Wilde, Daniel Mortier (Translator), Michel Etienne (Translator)

306 pages

Published October 9, 2025

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

[Billy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Le mood grooming, j'ai vraiment eu du mal. Dorian a été formé par Lord Henry dès ses 20 ans et il est devenu une personne qui ne sait même plus reconnaître la morale, la conscience, ou distinguer la vraie vie d’une pièce de théâtre. —> Le fait que deux hommes de presque 15 ans de plus que Dorian se le disputent en en parlant comme si c’était un objet, le fait qu'il soit décrit comme simple et qu'apparemment on "sentait qu'il s'était tenu à l'écart des perversions", c'était pas fun à lire. Je ne sais pas ce qu'essayait réellement de dire Oscar Wilde avec ça mais je ne suis pas sûr que ça soit la meilleure manière de le faire.

Par contre j'ai apprécié le fait que très peu des crimes commis sont décrits. Il y a aussi toujours ce truc très mystérieux autour du portrait vu qu’on le voit rarement et je trouve intéressant que les sujets principaux soient juste évoqués et laissés à l’imagination, qu’on traverse le récit à travers des discussions entre différents personnages, les leçons (insupportables) de Lord Henry, etc.

Et puis je sais pas si préciser aussi souvent que les femmes sont bêtes, sans importance, vides, c'était réellement nécessaire à l'histoire.

[cylaiine · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oui c'est bien écrit, mais qu'est ce qu'on se fait chier !
Le récit est tellement misogyne, antisémite, raciste et classiste que ça en est pénible à lire... une critique de la société de l'époque? hmm surtout les avis puants de l'auteur !!
Le lord Henry, vraiment ce personnage ma treizième raison, ce type est abject.. serait il le pointeur et l'incel originel ?? Le type se croit edgy au possible, il s'écoute parler, un enfer !! Une critique plus bas le compare à Beigbeder c'est exactement ça.
Je n'ai pas vraiment ressenti de tension tout au long du récit, tout nous est donné comme ça. Je vois ce que ça aurait pu être du coup je suis déçue, pour moi l'exécution est ratée.

[ludine707 · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️
Je pensais qu’il serait + maléfique…