The Picture of Dorian Gray

[A] remarkable work of imagination…A wonderfully entertaining parable of the aesthetic ideal—GuardianA heady late-Victorian tale of double-living—There’s an incurable disease afflicting females - ageing. Men, on the other hand, never pass their amuse-by dates. Sean Connery is still cutting the sex god mustard and, if time flies, then HE has frequent air miles. Yet, you never hear a man described as mutton dressed as ram, now do you? This is a book about a bloke who realises that the night is young, but he is not…—In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde set the gold standard for chroniclers of decadence—Guardianvery decadent and Victorian—Savidge ReadsVery decadent and Victorian—Savidge Reads

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin on 16 October 1854. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin and Magdalen College, Oxford. He later lived in London and married Constance Lloyd there in 1884. Wilde was a leader of the Aesthetic Movement. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was first published in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1890. He published a revised and expanded edition in 1891 in response to negative reviews which criticised the book’s immorality. Wilde became famous through of the immense success of his plays such as Lady Windemere’s Fan (1892), An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). In 1985, after a public scandal involving Wilde’s relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, he was sentenced to two years’ hard labour in Reading Gaol for ‘gross indecency’. His poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol was based on his experiences in prison and was published in 1898. After his release, Wilde never lived in England again and died in Paris on 30 November 1900. He is buried in P re Lachaise cemetery.

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