Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Works, The (Barnes & Noble Leatherbound Classics) (Barnes & Noble Leatherbound Classic Collection) - Hardcover

Oscar Wilde

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1435139437 ISBN 13: 9781435139435

Publisher: Barnes & Noble, 2012

Synopsis

A pivotal figure in nineteenth-century literature, Oscar Wilde was a multitalented and multifaceted writer. His large and diverse body of work includes immensely popular stage plays, the highly regarded novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, several collections of exquisitively crafted short fiction, critical essays that influenced how the world looks at art and elegant verse. This 2012 leatherbound omnibus edition of Wilde's writing collects the full contents of his short-fiction collection Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories and his two collections of fairy tales for young readers, The Happy Prince and Other Tales and A House of Pomegranates. Also included is The Picture of Dorian Gray, a novel that scandalised Victorian England when it was published in 1891 and that has since been acknowledged a brilliant commentary on art and the society depicted in it. The volume concludes with all nine stage plays that Wilde finished in his lifetime, among them the masterpieces of wit and comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband. Decorative, durable, and collectible, this book offers hours of reading pleasure and is an indispensible cornerstone for any home library.

About this title

Review:

A lush, cautionary tale of a life of vileness and deception or a loving portrait of the aesthetic impulse run rampant? Why not both? After Basil Hallward paints a beautiful, young man's portrait, his subject's frivolous wish that the picture change and he remain the same comes true. Dorian Gray's picture grows aged and corrupt while he continues to appear fresh and innocent. After he kills a young woman, "as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife", Dorian Gray is surprised to find no difference in his vision or surroundings. "The roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily in my garden."

As Hallward tries to make sense of his creation, his epigram-happy friend Lord Henry Wotton encourages Dorian in his sensual quest with any number of Wildean paradoxes, including the delightful "When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy." But despite its many languorous pleasures, The Picture of Dorian Gray is an imperfect work. Compared to the two (voyeuristic) older men, Dorian is a bore, and his search for ever new sensations far less fun than the novel's drawing-room discussions. Even more oddly, the moral message of the novel contradicts many of Wilde's supposed aims, not least "no artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style." Nonetheless, the glamour boy gets his just deserts. And Wilde, defending Dorian Gray, had it both ways: "All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment."

Review:

"Every line that Wilde ever wrote affected me so enormously." --Morrissey, musician "A heady late-Victorian tale of double-living, in which Dorian's fatal, corruptive influence over women and men alike is suggestively indistinct." --Sarah Waters, author, Fingersmith

About this edition

• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1435139437
• ISBN 13: 9781435139435
• Binding: Leather Bound
• Number of pages: 848