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The Picture of Dorian Gray
7.5Oscar Wilde
Wilde's only novel — the portrait that ages while its subject stays young; the founding work of Aestheticism and the Victorian era's most quotable scandal.
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ISBN 9781726426152Public-domain editions also available free — see below.
Summary & Critical Assessment (Score: 7.5/10)
Oscar Wilde's only novel is the signature work of the Aestheticism movement, a brilliantly unsettling fable in which a portrait ages and decays while its subject, Dorian Gray, retains his youth and beauty. The novel poses searching questions about the relationship between art and morality, pleasure and conscience. Its epigrammatic wit and gothic undertones have made it a lasting work of late Victorian fiction.
Generated at the height of late Victorian aestheticism, the novel scandalized contemporary readers with its themes of hedonism and moral corruption. Wilde's subsequent prosecution and imprisonment in 1895 lent the book an aura of martyrdom, and it became a central text of the Decadence movement that challenged bourgeois moral certainties across Europe.
Europe, 1888-1891
Fin de siecle. Chekhov emerges as the master of the short story. Wilde publishes Dorian Gray. Hamsun writes Hunger in Norway. Hardy publishes Tess. Frazer's Golden Bough compiles mythology from across the British Empire, providing the intellectual catalyst for literary modernism. Jack the Ripper terrorizes London. Bismarck falls from power. Van Gogh dies. Ibsen and Strindberg dominate Scandinavian theater. The century's end approaches with both decadence and creative ferment.
Awards & Adaptations
Multiple film adaptations. Core in English lit.
Recommended Edition
First ed. (1890; rev. 1891)
