The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The first World's Classics were introduced by some of the greatest writers of their day, including Virginia Woolf, Graham Greene and T.S. Eliot. In these hardback editions, contemporary novelists including A.S. Byatt and Joyce Carol Oates introduce their favourite classics in original pocketbook size. Echoing the original World's Classics series, the books are produced to gift-book standard with stitched binding, head and tail bands, printed on 60msg paper and featuring matt laminated jackets in a "retro-look" design. When Dorian Gray gazes upon his own portrait, he makes a wish that his youth and beauty will last forever. Good-natured and easily led, he falls into bad company and a life of debauchery, yet all the time retains his innocent good looks. Only his portrait reveals the true corruption of his soul.
Wilde, Oscar: - Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 - 30 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the circumstances of his criminal conviction for gross indecency, imprisonment, and early death at age 46. Wilde's parents were successful Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life. At university, Wilde read Greats; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising 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. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new English Renaissance in Art and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. 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). The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote 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. Unperturbed, 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 The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) was still being performed in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry prosecuted for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The libel trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency with men. After two more trials he 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 1905), a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. On his release, he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life. He died destitute in Paris at the age of 46.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780192100313 |
| ISBN 10 | 0192100319 |
| Title | The Picture of Dorian Gray |
| Author | Oscar Wilde |
| Series | Oxford World's Classics |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Year published | 1999-04-08 |
| Number of pages | 238 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |