The Picture of Dorian Gray
Beautiful young Dorian Gray wishes that his portrait would grow old instead of him. His wish comes true: he stays young and lovely while the painting, hidden away, records every sin. By Oscar Wilde (1891). A public-domain classic.
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How it begins The 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. Keep reading →About this story
A painter finishes a portrait of a strikingly beautiful young man, Dorian Gray. Dorian, who has just heard a charming older friend talk about how short youth is, makes a wish about the picture. From then on the book follows what that wish costs him, and what it lets him get away with.
Oscar Wilde’s only novel first appeared in a magazine in 1890 and came out as a longer book in 1891. It caused a scandal at once, and some of the criticism was later used against Wilde in court. It is also very quotable, full of epigrams, and there is a serious moral idea under the wit.
- Themes
- Beauty, vanity, influence, a double life
- Good for
- Readers who like dark, witty books; people interested in Wilde and the 1890s
- Worth noticing
- How much of the harm is done by talk, and how little by actions in the early chapters.
Chapters
- 1Chapter 122 min · 14 Oct
- 2Chapter 225 min · 14 Oct
- 3Chapter 320 min · 14 Oct
- 4Chapter 425 min · 14 Oct
- 5Chapter 520 min · 14 Oct
- 6Chapter 613 min · 14 Oct
- 7Chapter 720 min · 14 Oct
- 8Chapter 823 min · 14 Oct
- 9Chapter 917 min · 14 Oct
- 10Chapter 1015 min · 14 Oct
- 11Chapter 1133 min · 14 Oct
- 12Chapter 1212 min · 14 Oct
- 13Chapter 1311 min · 14 Oct
- 14Chapter 1420 min · 14 Oct
- 15Chapter 1514 min · 14 Oct
- 16Chapter 1614 min · 14 Oct
- 17Chapter 178 min · 14 Oct
- 18Chapter 1815 min · 14 Oct
- 19Chapter 1916 min · 14 Oct
- 20Chapter 209 min · 14 Oct