num_pages: 208
description: This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition™ includes a glossary and reader’s notes to help the modern reader contend with Wilde’s many allusions and his complex approach to the human condition. Oscar Wilde’s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, first appeared in 1891. Dorian Gray, a handsome young man, falls in with a group of “friends,” whose amoral philosophies he finds quite appealing. After he has his portrait painted, his frivolity and general demeanor degenerate into wickedness, but only the portrait bears the effects of his descent into decadence and serves as a powerful symbol of Gray’s internal ruin. Dorian himself, however, remains as young and unspoiled as the day he first sat for the painting. Wilde’s exploration of life without limits or consequences shocked its late-Victorian audience and remains highly un- settling to modern readers. We, like Dorian, are forced to reconsider whether total freedom and absolute knowledge are really worth their costs.
language: English
title: The Picture of Dorian Gray
titlecomplete: The Picture of Dorian Gray
characters: Dorian Gray, Adrian Singleton, Lady Gwendolen, Basil Hallward, Lady Narborough, Lady Victoria Wotton, Lord Staveley, Lord Henry Wotton, Henry Ashton, Duchess of Monmouth, James Vane, Sibyl Vane, Alan Campbell
genres: Audiobook, Novels, LGBT, Gothic, Literature, Horror, Fantasy, Classics, Fiction, 19th Century
ratings_count: 1437074
places: England, London, England
publisher: Prestwick House, Inc.