The Picture of Dorian Gray (VINTAGE CLASSICS LIBRARY) - Softcover

Oscar Wilde

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1784871710 ISBN 13: 9781784871710

Publisher: Vintage Classics, 2016

Synopsis

The first version of The Picture of Dorian Gray was published as the lead story in the July 1890 edition of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, along with five others.[85] The story begins with a man painting a picture of Gray. When Gray, who has a "face like ivory and rose leaves", sees his finished portrait, he breaks down. Distraught that his beauty will fade while the portrait stays beautiful, he inadvertently makes a Faustian bargain in which only the painted image grows old while he stays beautiful and young. For Wilde, the purpose of art would be to guide life as if beauty alone were its object. As Gray's portrait allows him to escape the corporeal ravages of his hedonism, Wilde sought to juxtapose the beauty he saw in art with daily life.

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

"This is a fine edition of Oscar Wilde's novel, ideally suited to readers approaching the work (and all its accompanying mythology) for the first time. The informative introduction, as well as the collection of supplementary materials contained in the appendices, helpfully place the work in historical, biographical, political, and literary contexts. The edition is especially appropriate for undergraduate students, on whom the scandalousness of Wilde's story might be lost, without benefit of such contextualizations."--William A. Cohen

Comments:

“This is a fine edition of Oscar Wilde’s novel, ideally suited to readers approaching the work (and all its accompanying mythology) for the first time. The informative introduction, as well as the collection of supplementary materials contained in the appendices, helpfully place the work in historical, biographical, political, and literary contexts. The edition is especially appropriate for undergraduate students, on whom the scandalousness of Wilde’s story might be lost, without benefit of such contextualizations.” — William A. Cohen, University of Maryland

“This is a fine edition of Oscar Wilde’s novel, ideally suited to readers approaching the work (and all its accompanying mythology) for the first time. The informative introduction, as well as the collection of supplementary materials contained in the appendices, helpfully place the work in historical, biographical, political, and literary contexts. The edition is especially appropriate for undergraduate students, on whom the scandalousness of Wilde’s story might be lost, without benefit of such contextualizations.” — William A. Cohen, University of Maryland

"This is a fine edition of Oscar Wilde's novel, ideally suited to readers approaching the work (and all its accompanying mythology) for the first time. The informative introduction, as well as the collection of supplementary materials contained in the appendices, helpfully place the work in historical, biographical, political, and literary contexts. The edition is especially appropriate for undergraduate students, on whom the scandalousness of Wilde's story might be lost, without benefit of such contextualizations." -- William A. Cohen, University of Maryland

"This is a fine edition of Oscar Wilde's novel, ideally suited to readers approaching the work (and all its accompanying mythology) for the first time. The informative introduction, as well as the collection of supplementary materials contained in the appendices, helpfully place the work in historical, biographical, political, and literary contexts. The edition is especially appropriate for undergraduate students, on whom the scandalousness of Wilde's story might be lost, without benefit of such contextualizations." -- William A. Cohen, University of Maryland

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage Classics
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1784871710
• ISBN 13: 9781784871710
• Binding: Paperback