Published just before he reached the height of his fame, Wilde's only full-length novel has endured as surely as the great plays for which he is celebrated. By exploring the actions of a young man who makes a pact to retain his outward beauty at the expense of inward corruption?symbolized in a portrait that ages as he remains unchanged?Wilde achieved a seminal novel that is part fable, part comedy of manners, and part treatise on the nature of art and beauty. As the figure in Dorian's portrait changes to reflect Dorian's inner decay, the stage is set for a masterful tale about appearance, reality, and the ultimate burden of conscience.
Oscar Wilde was an 19th century Irish writer whose works include the play The Importance of Being Earnest and the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. He is also one of the Victorian era's most famous dandies, a wit whose good-humored disdain for convention became less favored after he was jailed for homosexuality. Wilde grew up in a prosperous family and distinguished himself at Dublin's Trinity College and London's Oxford. He published his first volume of poems in 1881 and found work in England as a critic and lecturer, but it was his socializing (and self-promotion) that made him famous, even before the 1890 publication of The Picture of Dorian Gray. In 1895, at the height of his popularity, his relationship with the young poet Lord Alfred Douglas was declared inappropriately intimate by Douglas's father, the Marquess of Queensberry. Wilde sued for libel, but the tables were turned when it became clear there was enough evidence to charge Wilde with "gross indecency" for his homosexual relationships. He was convicted and spent two years in jail, after which he went into self-imposed exile in France, bankrupt and in ill health.
.jpg)
