The Picture of Dorian Gray / The Importance of Being Earnest

by Oscar Wilde

a beautifully bound book

Hardcover

First published May 15, 2015

About the author

Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts.
Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. In his youth, Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, he read Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles.
Wilde tried his hand at various literary activities: he wrote a play, published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on "The English Renaissance" in art and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he lectured on his American travels and wrote reviews for various periodicals. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skill, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into what would be his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Wilde returned to drama, writing Salome (1891) in French while in Paris, but it was refused a licence for England due to an absolute prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Undiscouraged, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London.
At the height of his fame and success, while An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) were still being performed in London, Wilde issued a civil writ against John Sholto Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The libel hearings unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and criminal prosecution for gross indecency with other males. The jury was unable to reach a verdict and so a retrial was ordered. In the second trial Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour, the maximum penalty, and was jailed from 1895 to 1897. During his last year in prison he wrote De Profundis (published posthumously in abridged form in 1905), a long letter that discusses his spiritual journey through his trials and is a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. On the day of his release, he caught the overnight steamer to France, never to return to Britain or Ireland. In France and Italy, he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life.

Reviews

[Saranya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow!

[Tabitha Malinowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never get tired of reading a classic. Well, I guess listening since it was an audiobook. It gives you various aspects of how life is perceived. In the most idiotic and wise way. Depending on which you agree with. There are so many morals and general life lessons to be learned or taken from this book. Even if you don't fully understand the book. You'll get something out of it when reading/listening to it.

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I added this one because I loved reading the Importance of Being Ernest. I haven't read Dorian Gray. "Ernest" is a play and it is so fun. There is a movie out (Reese Witherspoon, et al). Very fun.

[Julia]

The Picture of Dorian Gray - an interesting portrait (no pun intended), not only of the titular character, but of the author himself.
The Importance of Being Earnest - a lovely play! I can't wait to see it live someday.

[Oscar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dorian Gray, ser de perfecta belleza. En su vida llena de sensaciones y experiencias, tal vez nadie influyó como sus amigos Basil Hallward y Lord Henry. Éste por hacerlo consciente de su hermosura y aquél por haber hecho la bendita pintura que inició su perdición.

[Becky Barr wagner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very funny, and witty. It's not very long, I read it in a day.