The Picture Of Dorian Gray Annotated

Publishes for the first time the author's original, uncensored typescript, in an annotated edition with 60 color illustrations.

When handsome young Dorian Gray sees a painter’s stunning portrait of him, he is transfixed by its reflection of his own beauty. He is also troubled by the knowledge that the image in the painting will remain forever youthful and handsome while he himself will grow older and less desirable. He wishes aloud that the roles were reversed, saying that he would give his soul if only the painting would suffer the ravages of time and he were to remain forever young. From that point on, Dorian lives a life of hedonistic indulgence, knowing that only the painting will show his moral corruption.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is about a young man named Dorian Gray who has a portrait painted of himself. The artist, Basil Hallward, thinks Dorian Gray is very beautiful, and becomes obsessed with Dorian. One day in Basil's garden, Dorian Gray meets a man named Lord Henry Wotton. Lord Henry Wotton makes Dorian Gray believe that the only thing important in life is beauty. However, Dorian realizes that he will become less beautiful as he grows older. He wishes the portrait Basil painted would become old in his place. Dorian then sells his soul so he can be beautiful forever, but not on purpose.Dorian's wish comes true. However, every time Dorian does something evil, mean, or selfish, his picture ages. For 18 years, Dorian does not age. He does many bad things, while his portrait becomes more aged with each bad deed. Later on, Dorian decides to stop doing bad things in the hopes that this will make his portrait become beautiful again, but it only makes it worse. Dorian thinks that only a full confession will make the portrait beautiful again. However, he does not feel guilty for anything he has done. So Dorian picks up a knife and destroys the portrait.When his servants hear a scream from Dorian's room, they call the police. The police find Dorian's body on the floor with a stab wound in his heart. His body has become very aged. However, the portrait has returned to the way it was when it was first painted.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is the story of one beautiful, innocent young man'sseduction, moral corruption, and eventual downfall.And, oh yeah: it's also thestory of a really creepy painting.We meet our three central characters at the beginning of the book, when painterBasil Hallward and his close friend, Lord Henry Wotton, are discussing thesubject of Basil's newest painting, a gorgeous young thing named Dorian Gray.Basil and Henry discuss just how perfectly perfect Dorian is--he's totallyinnocent and completely good, as well as being the most beautiful guy ever towalk the earth. Lord Henry wants to meet this mysterious boy, but Basil doesn'twant him to; for some reason, he's afraid of what will happen to Dorian if LordHenry digs his claws into him.However, Lord Henry gets his wish--Dorian shows up that very afternoon, and,over the course of the day, Henry manages to totally change Dorian'sperspective on the world. From that point on, Dorian's previously innocent pointof view is dramatically different--he begins to see life as Lord Henry does, as asuccession of pleasures in which questions of good and evil are irrelevant.Basil finishes his portrait of Dorian, and gives it to the young man, who keeps itin his home, where he can admire his own beauty. Lord Henry continues to exerthis influence over Dorian, to Basil's dismay. Dorian grows more and moredistant from Basil, his former best friend, and develops his own interests.One of these interests is Sybil Vane, a young, exceptionally beautiful,exceptionally talented--and exceptionally poor--actress. Though she's stuckperforming in a terrible, third-rate theatre, she's a truly remarkable artist, andher talent and beauty win over Dorian. He falls dramatically in love with her,and she with him.For a moment, it seems like everything will turn out wonderfully. However, thisis just the beginning of Dorian's story. Once he and Sybil are engaged, her talentsuddenly disappears--she's so overcome with her passionate love for Dorianthat none of her roles on stage seem important to her anymore. This destroysDorian's love for her, and he brutally dumps her. Back home, he notices asomething different in his portrait--it looks somehow crueler. In the meanwhile,the distraught Sybil commits suicide, just as Dorian decides to return to her andtake back his terrible words.Sybil's suicide changes everything. At first, Dorian feels horrible... but he ratherquickly changes his tune. On Lord Henry's suggestion, Dorian reads amysterious "yellow book," a decadent French novel that makes him reevaluatehis whole belief system. The protagonist of the book lives his life in pursuit ofsensual pleasures, which intrigues Dorian. From this moment on, Dorian is achanged man.Dorian starts to live as hedonistically as his wicked mentor, Lord Henry, does.The only thing that documents this turn for the worst is the portrait, whichalarmingly begins to exhibit the inward corruption of Dorian's soul; thebeautiful image changes, revealing new scars and physical flaws with each ofDorian's dastardly actions. As years pass, the man in the picture grows more andmore hideous, as Dorian himself stays unnaturally young and beautiful. Rumorsstart to spread about the various people whose lives Dorian has ruined, and hisformerly good reputation is destroyed.On Dorian's 38th birthday, he encounters Basil, who desperately asks his formerfriend if all the horrifying rumors about him are true. Dorian finally snaps andshows Basil the portrait, in which the horrible truth about his wicked nature isrevealed. Basil recoils, and begs Dorian to pray for forgiveness. In response,Dorian murders Basil, stabbing him brutally. He blackmails another of hisformer friends into disposing of the body.Dorian retreats to an opium den after dealing with all of the evidence, where heencounters an enemy he didn't know he had--Sybil Vane's brother

Over 120 years after Oscar Wilde submitted The Picture of Dorian Gray for publication, the uncensored version of his novel appears here for the first time in a paperback edition. This volume restores material, including instances of graphic homosexual content, removed by the novel's first editor, who feared it would be "offensive" to Victorians.

Written in his distinctively dazzling manner, Oscar Wilde's story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is the author's most popular work. The tale of Dorian Gray's moral disintegration caused a scandal when it first appeared in 1890, but though Wilde was attacked for the novel's corrupting influence, he responded that there is, in fact, "a terrible moral in Dorian Gray." Just a few years later, the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wilde's homosexual liaisons, which resulted in his imprisonment. Of Dorian Gray's relationship to autobiography, Wilde noted in a letter, "Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be-in other ages, perhaps.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde's first and only novel, is a Faustian story of a man who trades the purity of his soul for undying youth. It was written in 1889 and first published in the literary magazine Lippincott's Monthly in July, 1890 (Drew ix). This was a shorter version, without the preface or chapters 3, 5, or 15-18, which were added for later publication in 1891. These additional chapters, which are now indispensable aspects of the work, introduce the character of James Vane, the vengeful brother of one of the victims of Dorian's many careless affairs. At the time it was published, the novel elicited a sensational amount of negative criticism, with detractors condemning its homosexual undertones and seeming embrace of hedonistic values. The preface was written as a response to the unkind critics of the first edition, blaming them for failing to grasp Wilde's belief that art should be appreciated on purely aesthetic terms, without consideration of morality.The central idea behind Wilde's reinterpretation of the Faust myth appeared several years before he began writing the novel, in the form of a spoken tale that the author would tell to friends, especially young admirers. Wilde was well aware of the story's debt to older tales of selling one's soul, youth, beauty, and power, freely admitting that it was a notion "that is old in the history of literature, but to which I have given a new form" (Drew xiv). This "new form" brings the idea of duplicity, of leading a double life, to the forefront of the tale, a theme that is much more dominant in Dorian Gray than it is in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus or Goethe's Faust, which is a typical characteristic of Wilde's work. This theme is explicitly explored, for instance, in the author's most celebrated play, The Importance of Being Earnest.As Wilde's notoriety grew, mainly as a result of this novel's infamy, his enemies continued to use the homosexual undertones and seemingly immoral hedonistic values of Dorian Gray as an argument against his character. Such criticisms continued throughout his ruinous court appearances in 1895. At the time, any sort of homosexual act was a serious criminal offence in England. The first published version of the book from Lippincott's Monthly contained much more obvious allusions to physical love between Dorian and Lord Henry, and Dorian and Basil. Wilde had made a point of reducing these references in the revision, but the original version of the novel provided much fuel for his opponents' arguments.After the trials, Wilde was briefly imprisoned, and his literary career never recovered. He moved to the European mainland and lived under an assumed name until his death, in a Paris hotel, in 1900. Wilde cited this novel as being primarily responsible for his ruin, speaking of "the note of Doom that like a purple thread runs through the cold cloth of Dorian Gray" (Drew xxvii). Only decades after Wilde's death would the work truly become respected as a literary masterpiece.Despite the critical preoccupation with the book's seeming approval of alternative lifestyles, Dorian Gray is a novel that offers much more to both intellectual and artistically sensitive readers. It is primarily concerned with examining the complex relationships between life, art, beauty, and sin while presenting a compellingly cynical portrait of high society life in Victorian-era London. It examines the role of art in social and personal life while warning against - despite Wilde's claims of artistic amorality - the dangers of unchecked vanity and superficiality.