Product Description

A unique one-volume anthology which includes all of Wilde's stories, plays, and poems. It also features a large portion of his essays and letters and an introduction by Wilde's son, Vyvyan Holland.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #49181 in Books
• Published on: 1989-09-27
• Released on: 1989-09-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1216 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780060963934
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
`This new edition has all the expertise one expects of sucha volume.' Contemporary Review March 2001

About the Author

Born in 1856, Oscar Wilde was a noted essayist, playwright, fairy tale writer and poet, as well as an early leader of the Aesthetic Movement. His plays include: An Ideal Husband, Salome, A Woman of No Importance, and Lady Windermere's Fan. Among his best known stories are The Picture of Dorian Gray(CPN 1095) and The Canterville Ghost(SWC 2051).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

The Picture Of Dorian Gray

The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

From the corner of the divan of' Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs ; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid jade-faced painters of Tokio who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.

In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, such public excitement, and gave rise to so many strange conjectures.

As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and, closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake.

"It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done," said Lord Henry, languidly. " You must certainly send it next year to the Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse. The Grosvenor is really the only place."

"I don't think I shall send it anywhere," he answered, tossing his head back in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at Oxford. " No : I won't send it anywhere."

Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows, and looked at him in amazement through the thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in such

fanciful whirls from his heavy opium-tainted cigarette. " Not send it anywhere ? My dear fellow, why ? Have you any reason ? What odd chaps you painters are ! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in England, and make the old men quite jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion."

"I know you will laugh at me," he replied, " but I really can't exhibit it. I have put too much of myself into it."

Lord Henry stretched himself out on the divan and laughed.

"Yes, I knew you would ; but it is quite true, all the same."

"Too much of yourself in it ! Upon my word, Basil, I didn't know you were so vain ; and I really can't see any resemblance between you, with your rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young

Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves. Why, my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you-well, of course you have an intellectual expression, and all that. But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don't think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he a-ways looks absolutely delightful. Your mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose picture really fascinates me, never thinks. I feel quite sure of that. He is some brainless, beautiful creature, who should be always here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in summer when we want something to chill our intelligence. Don't flatter yourself, Basil : you are not in the least like him."

"You don't understand me, Harry," answered the artist. " O course I am not like him. I know that perfectly well. Indeed, I should be sorry to look like him. You shrug your shoulders ? I am telling you the truth. There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one's fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play.

Customer Reviews

Don't leave home without it
If you believe literature's main purpose in existence is to induce pleasure, you could probably never find a better writer than Oscar Wilde.

All his plays are absolute delights from start to finish, even the ones that aren't The Importance of Being Earnest. The Picture of Dorian Gray is a fantastic novel and a deserved classic. His poetry's derivative, but not bad by any stretch of the imagination. His stories, essays, letters, collections of epigrams, and other various writings are excellent reading as well, if you don't mind occasional melodrama or other minor missteps.

This is a relatively expensive collection, but one that is well worth it. I don't regret spending a penny. The print's a readable size and, to my somewhat expansive knowledge on Wilde, none of his writings have been omitted or forgotten.

Essential for those who want to enjoy literature while allowing it to expand the mind, but also looking for something deeper than Tuesdays With Morrie or other modern, popular tripe.

Great read, great fly-swat!
Whoa! I was totally unfamiliar with the works of Oscar Wilde, until I bought this one on a friend's recommendation. It's huuuuuge, yet incredibly beautiful. Dorian Gray must be one of the greatest stories ever told, his poems are razor-sharp, his letters not less, and every line he comes up with is quotable. If you want to make sure you don't miss a thing, this is the book to get (and try his biography, especially the part about the trial).

Complete works is just that!
Most paperbacks the size of this one, nearly 3" wide, are hard to hold onto but the quality of this paperback is very good and text size easily readable. So far I have found every Oscar Wilde entry I was looking. Highly recommend.