The Picture of Dorian Gray - by Oscar Wilde (Paperback)

About the Book

A beautiful paperback edition of Oscar Wilde's truly brilliant Gothic novel.

Book Synopsis

A perfect depiction of fin-de-siècle decadence, Oscar Wilde's only novel highlights the tension between the polished surface and murky depths of Victorian high society.

Dorian Gray is young, arrogant and devastatingly handsome. Confronted by his beauty in the form of a portrait, and struck by the terrible realization that he will age, Dorian wishes to retain his charms for ever and finds his desire granted. He abandons himself to a life of hedonism, vice and murder, yet his face remains unmarked by his evil. But, hidden in his attic, the painting ages and corrupts, and one day Dorian must stand face to face with the man he has become.

Parties and Passions, Mrs Dalloway and The Great Gatsby are also available in this Macmillan Collector's Library series of gorgeous paperbacks featuring the greatest parties and the wildest passions in literature.

About the Author

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. He studied there, at Trinity College, and then at Oxford, where he founded the cult of aestheticism. He published several collections of stories and one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, in 1891. He had many successes as a playwright, first with Lady Windermere's Fan in 1892, and all his plays were performed in London between 1892 and 1895. A dazzling wit and flamboyant figure, Wilde's career was cut short after his homosexuality was exposed, and he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment in 1895. Released in 1897, he fled to France where he died a broken man in 1900.