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The picture of Dorian Gray ([New ed.])

Part of the Penguin classics series
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Oscar Wilde's tale of a Faustian pact in Victorian England,The Picture of Dorian Grayis a both a slow-burning Gothic horror and a brilliant philosophical investigation of youth, beauty and desire. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction and notes by Robert Mighall.

Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life; indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence.The Picture of Dorian Graywas asuccès de scandale. Early readers were shocked by its hints at unspeakable sins, and the book was later used as evidence against Wilde at the Old Bailey in 1895. It has lost none of its power to fascinate and disturb.

This definitive edition includes a selection of contemporary reviews condemning the novels immorality, and the introduction to the first Penguin Classics edition by Peter Ackroyd.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), son of an eminent eye-surgeon and a nationalist poet, was educated in Dublin and Oxford and became the leading exponent of the new Aesthetic Movement. His work, including short fiction suchThe Happy Price(1888), his novelThe Picture of Dorian Gray(1891), gradually won him a reputation, which was cemented by his phenomenally successful plays, includingA Woman of No Importance(1893),An Ideal Husband(1895) andThe Importance of Being Earnest(1895). Imprisoned for homosexual acts, he died after his release, in exile in Paris.

If you enjoyedThe Picture of Dorian Gray, you might like Joris-Karl Huysmans'Against Nature (A Rebours)Wilde's real-life inspiration for the novel that slowly corrupts Dorian Gray, also available in Penguin Classics.

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Product Details
Penguin
0141442514 / 9780141442518
eBook (EPUB)
823.8
30/01/2003
England
English
Classics
296 pages
Copy: 10%; print: 10%
Quiz No: 200402, Points 14.00, Book Level 7.70,
Upper Years - Key Stage 3 Learn More
Description based on print version record.