num_pages: 248
description: The Picture of Dorian Gray, brilliantly showcases Oscar Wilde's enormous gifts for astute social observation and sparkling prose. Dorian Gray is a dreamlike story of a young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty. As a result of this seedy exchange, Dorian remains unchanged - ageless, vain, and amoral - while his portrait grows increasingly hideous with the years.Taking the reader in and out of London drawing rooms, to the heights of aestheticism, and to the depths of decadence, The Picture of Dorian Gray is not only a melodrama about moral corruption but also a fascinating look at the Wilde’s fin-de-siècle world. Inspiring several sequels, the novel has become an essential treatise on countercultre, and Wilde's preface to the book - which her later added to mollify critics - is a veritable manifesto of the creed “Art for Art’s Sake.”The ever-quotable Wilde, who made his reputation in London with his scintillating plays, suffered much in his public life - a disastrous marriage, an affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, the much-publicized "indecency" trials that led to his imprisonment, and, in his final days, exile on the Continent. But one of the most difficult realities Wilde had to bear was the public's outrage and misunderstanding of his one and only novel. Condemned as immoral upon its publication, The Picture of Dorian Gray is in truth one of the most intense meditations on morality in Western literature.
language: English
title: The Picture of Dorian Gray
titlecomplete: The Picture of Dorian Gray
characters: Basil Hallward, Adrian Singleton, James Vane, Dorian Gray, Henry Ashton, Lady Victoria Wotton, Lord Staveley, Sibyl Vane, Lady Gwendolen, Alan Campbell, Lord Henry Wotton, Duchess of Monmouth, Lady Narborough
genres: Fiction, 19th Century, LGBT, Classics, Gothic, Horror, Audiobook, Fantasy, Literature, Novels
ratings_count: 1437393
places: London, England, England
publisher: Barnes & Noble Classics