Product Description

Since its first publication in 1890, Oscar Wilde's only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, has remained the subject of critical controversy. Acclaimed by some as an instructive moral tale, it has been denounced by others for its implicit immorality. After having his portrait painted, Dorian Gray is captivated by his own beauty. Tempted by his world-weary friend, decadent friend Lord Henry Wotton, he wished to stay young forever and pledges his very soul to keep his good looks. As Dorian's slide into crime and cruelty progresses, he stays magically youthful, while his beautiful portrait changes, revealing the hideous corruption of moral decay. Set in fin-de-siecle London, the novel traces a path from the studio of painter Basil Howard to the opium dens of the East End. The text of this edition is derived from the Oxford English Texts, which prints acritically established version of the first book edition of 1891. Also included is a new, fuller introduction, which considers the difference between the 1890 and 1891 texts, Wilde's range of sources, significant critical approaches to the novel and its reputation since 1891, full explanatory notes that identify Wilde's sources, and an up-to-date-bibliography.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27390 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780199535989
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Review
It seemed to be an impossible task to outdo the former edition of 'Dorian Gray' in the World's Classics series, but Bristow has achieved his goal. The quality of the explanatory notes is, simply, superb, and the introduction is succint but informative,

About the Author

Joseph Bristow is editor of the Oxford English Texts edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry and Olive Schreiner's African Farm for OWC. He is the author of The Fin-de-Siecle Poem: English Culture and the 1890s (Ohio UP, 2005).

Customer Reviews

Beauty Is a Form of Genius.
Oscar Wilde was one of the foremost representatives of Aestheticism, a movement based on the notion that art exists for no other purpose than its existence itself ("l'art pour l'art"), not for the purpose of social and moral enlightenment. Born in Dublin and a graduate of Oxford's Magdalen College, he initially worked primarily as a journalist, editor and lecturer, but gradually turned to writing and produced his most acclaimed works in the six-year span from 1890 to 1895, roughly coinciding with the period of his romantic involvement with Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas, sixteen years his junior. Douglas's strained relationship with his father, John Sholto Douglas, Marquees of Queensberry, eventually resulted in a series of confrontations between Wilde and the Marquees, which first led to a libel suit brought by Wilde against his lover's father (who had openly accused Wilde of "posing as a sodomite" and threatened to disown his son if he didn't give up his acquaintance with the writer) and subsequently to two criminal trials against Wilde for "gross indecencies," based on a law generally interpreted to prohibit homosexual relationships. Sentenced to a two-year term of "hard labor" in Reading Gaol, Wilde emerged from prison in 1897 a spiritually, physically and financially broken man and, unable to continue living in England or Ireland, after three years' wanderings throughout Europe died in 1900 of cerebral meningitis, barely 46 years old.

"The Picture of Dorian Gray," Wilde's only novel besides seven plays as well as several works of short fiction, poetry, nonfiction and two fairy tale collections originally written for his two sons, is critical to an understanding of Wilde's body of work and his personality primarily for two reasons: First, because it constitutes one of his earliest fully accomplished formulations of Aestheticism, and secondly because of its undeniable undercurrent of homoeroticism; an inclination which, after a six-year marriage widely thought to initially have been a true love match, Wilde had begun to explore more openly around the time of the novel's creation (1890). The story's title character is an exceptionally handsome young man who, both in the eyes of the artist tasked to paint his portrait, Basil Hallward, and in those of their somewhat older friend Lord Henry Wotton, epitomizes perfect beauty and is coveted by both men for that very reason. Seduced by hedonistic Lord Henry into believing that beauty can literally justify anything, including any act of immorality, Dorian sells his soul for maintaining his beautiful appearance, letting his portrait age in his stead. (In that, his character resembles Goethe's and Marlowe's Faust.) He then quickly turns from an innocent youth into a cruel and calculating man whom society, in its shallow adherence to appearances, nonetheless never associates with any of the results of his cruelty, never looking beyond the surface of his handsome exterior and assuming that a man so beautiful must necessarily also be good. Ultimately it is Dorian himself who brings about his own downfall when he is no longer able to face the manifestation of his evilness in Basil Hallward's picture.

Upon its initial publication in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1890, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" was widely scorned as immoral by a public neither familiar with nor particularly open to the concepts of Aestheticism and its mockery of middle class morality, and repulsed by the thinly veiled homoerotic relationship of the novel's protagonists. Wilde republished the work the following year, adding a preface designed to explain his views on art. Yet, it was that preface which, along with several of his other publications and his written exchanges with Lord Alfred Douglas, ultimately would play a devastating role in his trials, where Queensberry's attorney would come to use an excerpt from that very preface - "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written" - to extract from Wilde statements to the effect that any book inspiring a sense of beauty (including, as implied in the attorney's question, an "immoral" book, if "The Picture of Dorian Gray" could be qualified as such) was well-written and therefore commendable; that only Philistines, brutes and illiterates - whose views on art he considered invariably stupid and for which he therefore didn't "care twopence" - could consider this novel "perverted," and that the majority of the reading public would probably not be able to draw a proper distinction between a good and a bad book. It was testimony such as this, as well as the impending confrontation with a number of male witnesses ready to testify as to the nature of their relationship with Wilde, that not only caused the author's attorney to convince his client to drop the libel suit against Queensberry but also opened the door for Wilde's own subsequent prosecution.

If "The Picture of Dorian Gray" has a central theme besides the supremacy of beauty and the depiction of a society primarily interested in appearances, it is a call for individuality: Dorian's cruelty is brought out only after he allows himself to be influenced by Lord Henry's equally seductive and cynical hedonism; and similarly, Basil Hallward's blind idolizing of Dorian eventually proves fatal for the painter. - Wilde's only novel is one of the first and most poignant expressions of his own individualism; but unlike his protagonist, who ultimately pays a ghastly prize for selling his soul and giving up his individuality, Wilde paid as high a price for maintaining his. Like Dorian, he knew that "[e]ach of us has Heaven and Hell in him," and although this novel's preface ends with the provocative statement that "[a]ll art is quite useless," it was the very fact that Wilde put his entire being into his art that ultimately destroyed him. But like beauty, which is finally restored to perfection in Dorian Gray's portrait, Wilde's works have stood the test of time; and not merely for their countless, pricelessly witty epigrams. They're as well worth a read as ever.

Also recommended:
Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Collins Classics)
Oscar Wilde
Wilde (Special Edition)
The Oscar Wilde Collection
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Importance of Being Earnest - Criterion Collection
The Importance of Being Earnest
An Ideal Husband
A Good Woman

"Like the painting of a sorrow, a face without a heart."
That famous quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet certainly applies to Dorian Gray. And Lord Henry Wotton couldn't help using this quote, much like he couldn't help baiting Dorian Gray. Lord Henry admires the man in Basil Hallward's new portrait so much that he has got to meet him. Is he as beautiful in real life as he is in the painting? Is he ever! He is an Adonis, a young man as pure on the inside as he is on the outside. No wonder Hallward is obsessed with him! So begins Lord Henry's attempts to corrupt the young man. In no uncertain terms, he tells Dorian Gray that "beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances." He also goes on to tell him that his wonderful youth and good looks are his best qualities, too bad someday they will fade. Dorian Gray is upset. His portrait will remain young and beautiful forever, whereas he will age and lose with his physical beauty. If only it were the other way around...

That is all I'll share in terms of plot. You have got to read this magnificent novel to know the rest. The Picture of Dorian Gray, first published in 1890, is one of the most disturbing works of fiction I have ever read. No wonder it is so popular! It is thought provoking from beginning to end. Dorian is a cross between Narcissus and Faust -- his vanity is obvious from the very start, and Lord Henry is depicted as a devil, whereas Hallward is the angel who tries to maintain Dorian's innocence. Yes, as it has often been observed, the novel does have some not-so-concealed references to homosexuality. The aforementioned theme, mainly noticeable in Hallward, is, in the words of Marianne Dashwood in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, "implied but never declared." There was no need for Wilde to say it in so many words, but he dropped hints here and there, like the rumors that Hallward moved to San Francisco. I doubt he would have been able to be more inconspicuous in his time. This novel could cover long hours of discussion. There are so many themes and symbolism and magic realism and foreshadowing here, and Lord Henry's crude but honest musings and observations are fascinating. He is definitely the most interesting character in the book. This is my first time reading this book. I'd wanted to read it since I read Amanda Filipacchi's Nude Men ten years ago. Why it took me so long to give it a whirl I will never know. Better late than never, I guess. And if you haven't read it, well, need I suggest that you do? You won't regret it. This is nineteenth century literature at its finest.

Wilde Weavings
I'm really not sure why a lot of people have not read this. It truly is a work that can only be appreciated when read and reread. This is my second time reading through the pages that Wilde weaves with this epigrams and curious cascading delight for words. Each sentence is as interesting and beautiful as the last as he speaks of sin conveyed in the most interesting of manners.

Truly, Dorian is a fall from grace. A Lucifer that could have looked upon what he would become if he had the choice. Perhaps the concept of the Devil hanging over Dorian's shoulder is what makes this story so interesting. Sin never weathers Dorian's face, he remains as beautiful as he was when he was in the prime of the human age. Only the tell-tale signs of age and sin and hate and cruelty are etched upon the portrait that Basil so intricately painted. It is an ugly thing that portrays every crime Dorian ever committed. Even, towards the end of the novel, when he wished to become 'good' the old sin cannot be washed away. Even so, Dorian cannot conform to the 'good life' and instead forces himself to an unknowing demise because he cannot cope with the prospect of living a wholesome life. He would have to give up the sweet taste of sin, that which he had known without reprimand for years.