Name: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Rating: 4.172360953461975 (2643 reviews)
ISBN: 9780497253103

ICON Reference

Webster's Thesaurus Edition

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Kosi H

lola

Maurine | INFP | Taurus | French

Abigail F

Lyndsey McIntyre 

Kat Albanese

Alina

Macy HB

Jaylee

Haley Paluszak

Scarly

In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place.

moira

Iris van der zanden

Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for. 

Bailey Drew

The birds that were singing in the dew-drenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her.

Amalie Elisabeth

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.

Amelia Reinertsen

I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. My God, Harry, how I worship her!

Amanda Shameem

Karolina 

erin alise 

Draculelle

Oscar Wilde

Roy Thomas

Sebastian Fiumara

Retells in comic book format Oscar Wilde's story of an incredibly handsome young man in Victorian England who retains his youthful appearance over the years while his portrait reflects both his age and evil soul as he pursues a life of decadence and corruption.

Atrapante, fascinante, cruel, estimulante. De los libros más adictivos que leí en mi vida. La historia de un joven hermoso que cae en el mundo de las pasiones y cómo lo transforman a él y a la gente a su alrededor, acompañado de una crítica a la sociedad aristocrática del 1890 en Londres.

Kyle Wilkinson

Not difficult to see why this is considered a masterpiece. The way Wilde phrases his sentences often made me go back and re-read them because they're so richly textured and witty. Beautifully written with a compelling protagonist to boot.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, the only novel by Oscar Wilde, was first published in 1890. A substantially revised and expanded edition was published in April 1891. For the new edition, Wilde revised the content of the novel's existing chapters, divided the final chapter into two chapters, and created six entirely new additional chapters. Whereas the original edition of the novel contains 13 chapters, the revised edition of the novel contains 20 chapters. The novel tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward. Dorian is selected for his remarkable physical beauty, and Basil becomes strongly infatuated with Dorian, believing that his beauty is responsible for a new mode of art. Talking in Basil's garden, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, a friend of Basil's, and becomes enthralled by Lord Henry's world view. Espousing a new kind of hedonism, Lord Henry suggests that the only thing worth pursuing in life is beauty, and the fulfillment of the senses. Realising that one day his beauty will fade, Dorian cries out, wishing that the portrait Basil has painted of him would age rather than himself. Dorian's wish is fulfilled, subsequently plunging him into a sequence of debauched acts. The portrait serves as a reminder of the effect each act has upon his soul, each sin being displayed as a new sign of aging on the portrait. The Picture of Dorian Gray is considered one of the last works of classic gothic horror fiction with a strong Faustian theme. It deals with the artistic movement of the decadents, and homosexuality, both of which caused some controversy when the book was first published. However, in modern times, the book has been referred to as "one of the modern classics of Western literature.

This book is an absolute classic when it comes to Gothic literature. This book teaches you the cruel side of vanity and the materalistic desires that follow with it and how vanity, selfishness, and the cruelty that follows with such traits ends up destroying you from the inside. There are parts which one does not expect to happen in this novel and this propels you further to read it more and more. Lastly, this book ends on a very high and a dramatic note giving the reader a very satisfied feeling. 

Aarush Arora

This book is an absolute classic when it comes to Gothic literature. This book teaches you the cruel side of vanity and the materalistic desires that follow with it and how vanity, selfishness, and the cruelty that follows with such traits ends up destroying you from the inside. There are parts which one does not expect to happen in this novel and this propels you further to read it more and more. Lastly, this book ends on a very high and a dramatic note giving the reader a very satisfied feeling. 

Absolute must read without a doubt!

The Portrait of Dorian Gray was first published in 1890 by Oscar Wilde. It's seen as one of the first Gothic horror fiction stories and it was criticized as scandalous and immoral! This is the special Reader's Choice Edition which has been carefully designed for Dorian Gray and Oscar Wilde fans for extra easy reading. Plot summary: This classic book is about a young man named Dorian Gray. He is the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward who thinks he is very good looking, with a pure beauty. One thing leads to another and Dorian embraces a new hedonism with Basil and a new group of friends. He begins to believe that the only things worth pursuing in life are beauty, fulfillment of the senses, and pleasures of the flesh... This is an excellent book for yourself and your own library. Or, you can give "The Portrait of Dorian Gray" (Reader's Choice Edition) away as a special gift.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (Reader's Choice Edition)

Portrait of Dorian Gray

leer sin mirar intro, increíble experiencia, nueva forma de entender la belleza como arte. no pasaría el test de la mujer pero se nota que ocurre con intención. un beso wilde, muy bueno

Maria

The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde, appearing as the lead story in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890, printed as the July 1890 issue of this magazine. Wilde later revised this edition, making several alterations, and adding new chapters; the amended version was published by Ward, Lock, and Company in April 1891. The title is sometimes rendered incorrectly as The Portrait of Dorian Gray.The novel tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward. Basil is impressed by Dorian's beauty and becomes infatuated with him, believing his beauty is responsible for a new mode in his art. Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, a friend of Basil's, and becomes enthralled by Lord Henry's world view. Espousing a new hedonism, Lord Henry suggests the only things worth pursuing in life are beauty and fulfillment of the senses. Realizing that one day his beauty will fade, Dorian (whimsically) expresses a desire to sell his soul to ensure the portrait Basil has painted would age rather than himself. Dorian's wish is fulfilled, plunging him into debauched acts. The portrait serves as a reminder of the effect each act has upon his soul, with each sin displayed as a disfigurement of his form, or through a sign of aging.The Picture of Dorian Gray is considered a work of classic gothic fiction with a strong Faustian theme.Sample text:Chapter 1The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ...

The Picture of Dorian Grey

Greg Talbot

You can't help but wonder if "Dorian Grey" would be better as a theatrical piece. Sure "Dorian Grey" is in book form, and chopped up neatly into chapters, but it has all the markings of a play. The characters, dazzling in their dialogue, feel remote and empty in a way that makes them vessals for a visual story. The dialogue is rich, but largely conversational It's almost like a Dosteysky "Crime and Punishment" without the interior view of the characters. The weaknesses are that details of the main characters are largely absent. And the tone is both bewildering and sobering as we see the protagonist revel in criminal behavior. The swiftness of events and generality of the story, kept it from greatness in my opinion Of course, there is a lot to take awway from this work. There is Lord Henry's wittiness and snobbish egotism. There are so many quotable lines, it's hardly a wonder that Wilde may be more appreciated today than in his lifetime. One aspect that I greatly enjoyed was how Wilde plays with our response to art. You can filter this book with how the characters Lord Henry, Dorian, and Basil relate to this painting, and it's meaning to them. One of the subtleties I enjoyed was how Dorian's viewing of the painting changes, and how it reflects his own insecurities. At first, I had great difficulty getting into this book, because of the generality of the languageand inscrutable characters. I'm not sure that the dark murderous plot really matches with the first half which is more about exploring identity. But there are times (like Chapter 11) where Wilde shinesand writes with such gusto and throws in historical allusions, it really comes across as nothing short of marvelous.

Emilia Frisby

Tim Pendry

Two sides of Oscar Wilde seem to be in creative tension in this classic horror tale - the showman literary extrovert, the man who launders witticisms and French literary fashion into British high society, and the moralist 'malgre lui' questioning not art or beauty but high society's ethical compass. The first side is dominant here, perhaps at times to the point of risking tiresomeness as 'bon mot' after 'bon mot' is thrown into the ring to entertain us. Similarly the new decadence of Huysmans 'A Rebours' is translated into English society in a way that can only be called derivative. This is Wilde (1890) before his stunningly witty plays and his fall from grace but after he had proven that he could carry a story. Its importance remains because its scandalous implication of homosexual relationships was brave for the time. It cannot be detached from what happened later. Wilde appears to live behind a mask but, unlike the rest of society, he made the mistake of allowing himself to appear from behind it too obviously. There is one passage where he even appears to predict the conditions for his own downfall in his exposure of how society operates in reality. The book is not as well written or structured as we have often been led to believe. It falters in its exposition at times. However, Wilde is superb at characterisation, creating 'real people' playing their masks within that late Victorian model of high status men caught up in the dark and impossible. We saw this with Jekyll &amp; Hyde and we will see this again with Dracula - men apparently in command of their situation are destabilised by some coded mythic entry of the abnormal: the split personality, the dark side separated into an art object or the vampire. There is no hint of homosexuality in the other two novels, although the first shows us an implicit loneliness behind the mask. The second gives us male bonding against external threats. Wilde's novel allegorises the secret self of one type of Victorian male in a most scandalous manner. The radical cynicism of Lord Henry and the romantic ethic of Basil Hallward might be seen as the two sides of Wilde himself. The first is a fashionable salonista but by aristocratic right whereas Wilde is the man accepted into society only on his epigrams. Lord Henry is stable, Wilde's fame is not. Hallward, who creates a pure beauty that supernaturally reflects goodness and evil, is a shadowier figure who comes to stand for what is right and good and pays the price. Dorian Gray is caught between a superficial 'social truth' and the 'soul' (an aesthetic view of the ethical). Gray is very young when his journey starts out. Indeed, the story should be seen as one of very young men maturing. Gray is impressionable. He adopts the aesthetic of pure beauty but abandons goodness because Lord Henry will not speak for it and Hallward is absent, engrossed in his art. Society (which Lord Henry can aristocratically play like an instrument of which he is a virtuoso) is neither moral nor immoral but amoral. It just 'is' from a position of wealth and authority. Hidden in the text are the seeds of Wilde's very peculiar version of socialism. There are moments when we feel sorry for Gray as the creation of his situation even as we recognise his behaviour to be monstrous. We would consider him a sociopath today. His story raises that hoary old question of whether sociopaths are made or are fated. If made, Lord Henry is in the dock here. So, the infamous picture which torments Gray but insufficiently to have him change his ways, drifts him towards the dark side just as Jekyll is drifted by Hyde into his darkness. The implication is that the good has to be worked at and that a man without internal restraints tends naturally to evil acts. No wonder Bram Stoker later proved useful in taking this late Victorian anxiety, 'othering' the evil so that it was no longer inside the male but outside and so capable of being fought and fought, at that, by a band of brothers. It is the switch from introvert fearful decadence to extrovert late imperial honour. As to the novel, a dispassionate view would note the forced aestheticism and the melodrama but still recognise that Wilde has captured something deeper about the late nineteenth century upper class male condition, made more existential by an underlying male-on-male sexual desire. An innocent could read the book and just see a disturbing horror tale without the gay sub-text but many sophisticated contemporaries could see that sub-text well enough and we can see it today. In his 1895 trial, the book was used as evidence of perversion. Passages from it were read in court. It is the courage of Wilde in attempting to find a way to express his inner self (even if the literary quality has been subsequently exaggerated out of sentiment) that strikes one at the end. It is the people in the novel who matter. There is compassion lurking under the cold wit.

Classic / British English An artist paints a picture of the young and handsome Dorian Gray. When he sees it, Dorian makes a wish that changes his life. As he grows older, his face stays young and handsome. But the picture changes. Why can't Dorian show it to anybody? What is its terrible secret? This Pack contains a Book and MP3

PENGUIN READERS 4: PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, THE BOOK AND MP3 PACK

Maldita obra de arte. Mi libro favorito por lejos. La narrativa y la expresión es exquisita. El análisis psicológico y la profundidad que tiene cada personaje lo convierte en un libro super profundo. Cada vez que lo relees encontras mas significados, referencias, metaforas... Sin palabras, amé este libro

Magali

Enthralled by a portrait of himself, young Dorian Gray makes a Faustian bargain to exchange his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Thus he is able to indulge in his desires, as only the portrait bears the traces of his decadence and becomes a nightmarish picture of his soul. Edited with an Introduction by Robert Mighall Preface by Peter Ackroyd

i fucking love this book so much its genuinely the book that got me into classics

THIS BOOK GOES HARD. also, it's basically a Victorian precursor to American Psycho. Love.

Katelyn Caillouet

Dark, elegant, and endlessly quotable. A haunting tale of vanity, decay, and the price of staying beautiful.

Tanishq Khandelwal

Excellent book. I heard so much about it before beginning it and I'm happy I finally took the time to read it. Its writing is both aesthetically pleasing and philosophically rich. The story is concise and dynamic with an ever-evolving plotline that keeps you well-engaged while also building on foundational themes. I had some serious reflections and contemplations to reconcile during this reading, but it was a phenomenal experience that I would recommend to most anyone. Highly recommend, 10/10.

Kay so Queso

Joseph Bristow

I reread this book thanks to Sarah Snook blowing me away in Kip Williams' one-actor play adaptation on Broadway, and I am so glad I did. Oscar Wilde's writing is sensual and witty. Its explorations of influence, moral relativism, art, and hedonism are timeless, but I think they are especially relevant in an age where corporatism and social media rule, encouraging us to both indulge and repress ourselves to excess. And, of course, this book is gay as hell...

alice

except for winter and marie, no one is more upset about this than i am...i expected this to be a 5 star read...

Lets begin with the story itself...I love it! I actually do really like this book! I like the writing and I like the themes, and I love the explorations in this! The dynamic between Basil and Dorian is so interesting, and I like how it delves into vanity and objectification of beauty, making it something to use instead of something to have or admire. So the book itself I would probably give 4.5 stars! I did really and truly enjoy it!

Now...the 0.5 stars...how do I explain this one...I can overlook many things and I can overlook many kinds of self insert by authors...but this one is so...weird.

I knew before starting this that Wilde was on trial for "homosexual activity" and that this book was used as evidence against him. This part is obviously bad, and no one should be put on trial for being gay. What I didn't know was that part of that trial was about his sexual encounters with boys as young as 13 (and even more specifically the one boy who just turned 16). Now...knowing this really changed things for me. The before, really interesting, exploration of the desire to perserve youthful beauty and their dynamic with Basil looking at young Dorian as an object he is not just allowed but almost required to use for his own benefit, turned into a really weird..."why would he write this"

I do not believe you can ever fully separate the art from the artist, especially when they are alive, but even when they are dead. And so knowing this overlap between the book and his personal beliefs and his life...it icks me out tbh.

Stas

except for winter and marie, no one is more upset about this than i am...i expected this to be a 5 star read...

Lets begin with the story itself...I love it! I actually do really like this book! I like the writing and I like the themes, and I love the explorations in this! The dynamic between Basil and Dorian is so interesting, and I like how it delves into vanity and objectification of beauty, making it something to use instead of something to have or admire. So the book itself I would probably give 4.5 stars! I did really and truly enjoy it!

Now...the 0.5 stars...how do I explain this one...I can overlook many things and I can overlook many kinds of self insert by authors...but this one is so...weird.
I knew before starting this that Wilde was on trial for "homosexual activity" and that this book was used as evidence against him. This part is obviously bad, and no one should be put on trial for being gay. What I didn't know was that part of that trial was about his sexual encounters with boys as young as 13 (and even more specifically the one boy who just turned 16). Now...knowing this really changed things for me. The before, really interesting, exploration of the desire to perserve youthful beauty and their dynamic with Basil looking at young Dorian as an object he is not just allowed but almost required to use for his own benefit, turned into a really weird..."why would he write this"

I do not believe you can ever fully separate the art from the artist, especially when they are alive, but even when they are dead. And so knowing this overlap between the book and his personal beliefs and his life...it icks me out tbh.

Delightful exploration of what happens to our humanity when we're shielded from the consequences of our actions. 

Chloe 

An exquisitely beautiful young man in Victorian England retains his youthful and innocent appearance over the years while his portrait reflects both his age and evil soul as he pursues a life of decadence and corruption.

#G584

i read this back in 2022 and i need to re-read it because my memories tell me i liked it more than just 3 stars so idk why i gave it just 3

micaela

The Picture of Dorian Gray, moral fantasy novel by Irish writer Oscar Wilde, published in an early form in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1890. The novel, the only one written by Wilde, had six additional chapters when it was released as a book in 1891. The work, an archetypal tale of a young man who purchases eternal youth at the expense of his soul, was a romantic exposition of Wilde's own Aestheticism. The story begins in the art studio of Basil Hallward, who is discussing a current painting with his witty and amoral friend Lord Henry Wotton. Henry thinks that the painting, a portrait of an extraordinarily beautiful young man, should be displayed, but Basil disagrees, fearing that his obsession with the portrait's subject, Dorian Gray, can be seen in the work. Dorian then arrives, and he is fascinated as Henry explains his belief that one should live life to the fullest by indulging one's impulses. Henry also points out that beauty and youth are fleeting, and Dorian declares that he would give his soul if the portrait were to grow old and wrinkled while he remained young and handsome. Basil gives the painting to Dorian. Henry decides to take on the project of molding Dorian's personality. A few weeks later, Dorian tells Henry that he has fallen in love with an actress, Sibyl Vane, because of her great beauty and acting talent. Henry and Basil go with him to a dingy theatre to see Sibyl, but her performance is terrible. Sibyl explains to Dorian that now that she knows what real love is, she can no longer pretend to be in love on stage. Dorian is repulsed and wants nothing further to do with her. When he returns home, he sees a cruel expression on the face of his portrait, and he decides to seek Sibyl's forgiveness. Henry arrives the next day, however, with news that Sibyl committed suicide the previous night, and he convinces Dorian that there is no reason for him to feel badly about it. Dorian has the portrait removed to his attic. Henry sends Dorian a book that he finds poisonous and fascinating (critics have suggested that it might be Against the Grain by Joris-Karl Huysmans). Under the book's influence, Dorian spends the next 18 years in the pursuit of capricious and sybaritic excess, and he becomes increasingly drawn to evil. He frequently visits the portrait, noting the signs of aging and of corruption that appear, though he himself remains unblemished.

All Time Classics

The only crime of this book is misogyny and Mr. Henry

The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirredamidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or themore delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was hiscustom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweetand honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bearthe burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds inflight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-facedpainters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to conveythe sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through thelong unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of thestraggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London waslike the bourdon note of a distant organ.In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a youngman of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting theartist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, suchpublic excitement and gave rise to so many strange conjectures.As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, asmile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly startedup, and closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within hisbrain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake."It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done," said Lord Henry languidly. "Youmust certainly send it next year to the Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar.Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able to seethe pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse. The Grosvenor is really the only place.""I don't think I shall send it anywhere," he answered, tossing his head back in that odd way thatused to make his friends laugh at him at Oxford. "No, I won't send it anywhere."Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows and looked at him in amazement through the thin bluewreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful whorls from his heavy, opium-tainted cigarette."Not send it anywhere? My dear fellow, why? Have you any reason? What odd chaps you paintersare! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to wantto throw it awa

Complete

I liked it, of course. I love all the gayness and the repressed (and not so repressed) sexuality. The first part is amazing but after that, some time skips were a bit confusing.

LIMEKI 

going into this blind made me feel like i was a victorian seeing ankle for the first time. dang! men are crazy. 

Ianna Chia

The picture of Dorian Gray

Maureen

"We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to. Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!"

***

The amount of vanity in this book is insane. You wouldn't think someone so absorbed like Dorian Gray could exist in this world, but he did. All because Wilde made it possible. The prose is so lovely and there were plenty of great quotes! I'm glad I finally got around to reading this book. The characters' mindsets are unlike any I've ever read before, so it was interesting to read their unique outlook on life.

Angie 

Ghofran Mustafa 

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

I'd stay up late for the last week with stacked cups of tea, reading and thinking about Dorian..
The story of the novel is known, but this does not mean that it will not surprise you. I read it with a friend of mine, and we talked about it a lot, and about the film adaptation, "which I considered as a distortion of the novel."

 As is evident when you read it, you will see in it,
 External beauty, narcissism, people and society's view, their reverence for appearances...
 The characters, I wish there were more details about them, about their lives and actions, especially Lord Henry. And how it affected Dorian's personality, to the point where they became similar, with a negative impact on everyone around them.
And more about the painter too.

It made me think and raised a lot of questions that I asked myself over the course of the chapters, but the biggest question remains; Was Dorian the victim of his friend, Lord Henry, who corrupted his soul, or was he like that from the beginning?

The Picture of Dorian Gray Webster's Thesaurus Edition

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