Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
All characters reduced
The Picture Of Dorian Gray - cover

The Picture Of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde, Goodreads

Publisher: Oscar Wilde

  • 0
  • 2
  • 0

Summary

Oscar Wilde's story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is one of his most popular works. Written in Wilde's characteristically dazzling manner, full of stinging epigrams and shrewd observations, the tale of Dorian Gray's moral disintegration caused something of a scandal when it first appeared in 1890. Wilde was attacked for his decadence and corrupting influence, and a few years later the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wilde's homosexual liaisons, trials that resulted in his imprisonment. Of the book's value as 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."
Available since: 12/22/2016.

Other books that might interest you

  • The Interlopers - cover

    The Interlopers

    Hector Hugh Munro

    • 0
    • 1
    • 0
    "The Interlopers" is the story of two sworn enemies who find themselves trapped and injured under a fallen tree in a forest at night.
    Show book
  • A Tale of Two Cities - cover

    A Tale of Two Cities

    Charles Dickens

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    A Tale of Two Cities is a novel by Charles Dickens. The novel depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same time period. It follows the lives of several protagonists through these events.
    Show book
  • W F Harvey - Six of the Best - Their legacy in 6 classic stories - cover

    W F Harvey - Six of the Best -...

    W F Harvey

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Six has always been a number we group things around – Six of the best, six of one half a dozen of another, six feet under, six pack, six degrees of separation and a sixth sense are but a few of the ways we use this number. 
     
    Such is its popularity that we thought it is also a very good way of challenging and investigating an author’s work to give width, brevity, humour and depth across six of their very best. 
     
    In this series we gather together authors whose short stories both rivet the attention and inspire the imagination to visit their gems in a series of six, to roam across an author’s legacy in a few short hours and gain a greater understanding of their writing and, of course, to be lavishly entertained by their ideas, their narrative and their way with words. 
     
    These stories can be surprising and sometimes at a tangent to what we expected, but each is fully formed and a marvellous adventure into the world and words of a literary master.
    Show book
  • Ligeia - cover

    Ligeia

    Edgar Allan Poe

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is celebrated for his tales of the macabre and the supernatural.  In this example of the genre the narrator tells of his adored wife  Ligeia, of her tragic death, and of his remarrying another beautiful woman Rowena who after a short and loveless marriage also dies but returns from the dead metamorphosed into his true love Ligeia.
    Show book
  • The Europeans - cover

    The Europeans

    Henry James

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    "The Europeans" is a novel written by Henry James, first published in 1878. The story is set in the 19th century and revolves around the experiences of two European siblings, Eugenia and Felix Young, who visit their American relatives in New England. The novel explores themes of cultural clash, social expectations, and the differences between European and American values.
    Show book
  • Don Quixote Vol 1 - cover

    Don Quixote Vol 1

    Miguel de Cervantes

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Don Quixote is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Published in two volumes, in 1605 and 1615, Don Quixote is considered the most influential work of literature from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon. As a founding work of modern Western literature and one of the earliest canonical novels, it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published.... The story follows the adventures of a hidalgo named Mr. Alonso Quixano who reads so many chivalric romances that he loses his sanity and decides to set out to revive chivalry, undo wrongs, and bring justice to the world, under the name Don Quixote de la Mancha. He recruits a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire, who often employs a unique, earthy wit in dealing with Don Quixote's rhetorical orations on antiquated knighthood. Don Quixote, in the first part of the book, does not see the world for what it is and prefers to imagine that he is living out a knightly story. Throughout the novel, Cervantes uses such literary techniques as realism, metatheatre, and intertextuality.
    Show book