Dorian Gray, a handsome young man, receives a beautiful painting of himself from his good friend Basil Hallward. In the same moment, a new acquaintance, Lord Henry, introduces Dorian to the ideals of youthfulness and hedonism, of which Gray becomes immediately obsessed. Meanwhile, the painting in Dorian's possession serves as a constant reminder of his passing beauty and youth, driving his obsession.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," Dor! ian 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."This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.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 Wotto! n 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."This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchas! e of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
The P! icture o f Dorian Gray altered the way Victorians understood the world they inhabited. It heralded the end of a repressive Victorianism, and after its publication, literature hadâ€"in the words of biographer Richard Ellmannâ€"“a different look.†Yet the Dorian Gray that Victorians never knew was even more daring than the novel the British press condemned as “vulgar,†“unclean,†“poisonous,†“discreditable,†and “a sham.†Now, more than 120 years after Wilde handed it over to his publisher, J. B. Lippincott & Company, Wilde’s uncensored typescript is published for the first time, in an annotated, extensively illustrated edition.
The novel’s first editor, J. M. Stoddart, excised materialâ€"especially homosexual contentâ€"he thought would offend his readers’ sensibilities. When Wilde enlarged the novel for the 1891 edition, he responded to his critics by further toning down its “immoral†elements. The differences between the text Wilde ! submitted to Lippincott and published versions of the novel have until now been evident to only the handful of scholars who have examined Wilde's typescript.
Wilde famously said that Dorian Gray “contains much of meâ€: Basil Hallward is “what I think I am,†Lord Henry “what the world thinks me,†and “Dorian what I would like to beâ€"in other ages, perhaps.†Wilde’s comment suggests a backward glance to a Greek or Dorian Age, but also a forward-looking view to a more permissive time than his own, which saw Wilde sentenced to two years’ hard labor for gross indecency. The appearance of Wilde’s uncensored text is cause for celebration.
(20110323)- Provides a detailed discussion of historical context and detailed textual annotations
In 1890, Oscar Wilde submitted the typescript of his new novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, to the editor of Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, which had contracted to publish it. Shocked by what he read, the ! editor proceeded, without Wilde’s knowledge, to cut numerous! explici t or suggestive passages. After the outcry following the magazine’s publication, Wilde was pressured into making further changes for the 1891 release of the novel in book form. Every version of the book published since has used this heavily-censored 1891 text. Until now.
Stonewall Riot Press is pleased to present the first ebook edition of the novel Oscar Wilde actually wrote, the one he intended the public to read. Shocking, erotic, at times even pornographic, Wilde’s original Picture of Dorian Gray is both a braver and more moving work than the version readers have always known. In this meticulously-edited edition, based on the author’s unpublished typescript and specially formatted for Kindle, readers can finally experience Wilde’s masterpiece as he intended it, free from the homophobic censorship that has marred it for over a century.
“The version that Wilde submitted to Lippincott's is the better fiction. It has the swift and uncanny rhyt! hm of a modern fairy tale â€" and Dorian is the greatest of Wilde's fairy tales.â€
Alex Ross (New Yorker)
“It's a revelatory exercise to examine the text of Wilde's original typescript. It yields a deeper understanding of its author and of the hypocrisy and intolerance of late-Victorian English society which led to his two-year imprisonment for ‘gross indecency’.†Joel Greenberg (The Australian)
“The typescript is, besides truer to Wilde's original intentions, a vastly better novel than the one most of us know. To call Wilde's earlier version leaner would miss the flavor and point of this aestheticism-drenched work, but it's a swifter, bolder, more uncompromising, less moralistic and in every respect more affecting work than its edited, rewritten, or otherwise censored versions.†Tim Pfaff (Bay Area Reporter)
- Provides a detailed discussion of historical context and detailed textual annotations
In 1890, Oscar Wilde submit! ted the typescript of his new novel, The Picture of Dorian Gra! y, to th e editor of Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, which had contracted to publish it. Shocked by what he read, the editor proceeded, without Wilde’s knowledge, to cut numerous explicit or suggestive passages. After the outcry following the magazine’s publication, Wilde was pressured into making further changes for the 1891 release of the novel in book form. Every version of the book published since has used this heavily-censored 1891 text. Until now.
Stonewall Riot Press is pleased to present the first ebook edition of the novel Oscar Wilde actually wrote, the one he intended the public to read. Shocking, erotic, at times even pornographic, Wilde’s original Picture of Dorian Gray is both a braver and more moving work than the version readers have always known. In this meticulously-edited edition, based on the author’s unpublished typescript and specially formatted for Kindle, readers can finally experience Wilde’s masterpiece as he intended it, free from the homo! phobic censorship that has marred it for over a century.
“The version that Wilde submitted to Lippincott's is the better fiction. It has the swift and uncanny rhythm of a modern fairy tale â€" and Dorian is the greatest of Wilde's fairy tales.â€
Alex Ross (New Yorker)
“It's a revelatory exercise to examine the text of Wilde's original typescript. It yields a deeper understanding of its author and of the hypocrisy and intolerance of late-Victorian English society which led to his two-year imprisonment for ‘gross indecency’.†Joel Greenberg (The Australian)
“The typescript is, besides truer to Wilde's original intentions, a vastly better novel than the one most of us know. To call Wilde's earlier version leaner would miss the flavor and point of this aestheticism-drenched work, but it's a swifter, bolder, more uncompromising, less moralistic and in every respect more affecting work than its edited, rewritten, or otherwise censored versions! .†Tim Pfaff (Bay Area Reporter)
Oscar Wilde's classic Th! e Pictur e of Dorian Gray and three additional stories"Oh! In what a wild hour of madness he had killed his friend! How ghastly the mere memory of the scene! He saw it all again. Each hideous detail came back to him with added horror. Out of the black cave of time, terrible and swathed in scarlet, rose the image of his sin." In their ideal of an exquisitely sensitive temperament that thrills to fine shadings in sensation, the principles of the aesthetic (or "decadent") movement are well suited to the tale of terror. No story exemplifies this better than Oscar Wilde's
The Picture of Dorian Gray. The sparkling wit and zest for life of Wilde's characters combine with cold-blooded acts of horror to generate a deliciously twisted sense of elegance and evil, civilization and degradation. Oscar Wilde, like Edgar Allan Poe, shows us that what we find loathsome and frightening can also be beautiful.Forever young. Forever cursed. Based on the acclaimed novel by Oscar Wilde. ! Upon arriving in London, the young and powerful Dorian Gray (Ben Barnes) becomes drawn into a world of debauchery and decadence by Lord Henry Wotton (Colin Firth). Desperate to preserve the beauty captured in his exquisite portrait, Dorian trades his soul for eternal youth â€" leading him down a path of wickedness and murder in order to protect his horrifying secret.
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