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The Picture of Dorian Gray (Best Novel Classics #65)

The Picture of Dorian Gray (Best Novel Classics #65)

Current price: $12.24
This product is not returnable.
Publication Date: August 18th, 2016
Publisher:
Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN:
9781537166001
Pages:
142
Usually Ships in 1 to 5 Days

Description

Classics for Your Collection:

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Summary:

What would you do to gain eternal youth, to be beautiful and young and highly respected forever and ever? In the first instance, you should think long and longer about such a yearning, because, in the end, it is not external beauty which counts ... it is the beauty of your soul. A lesson Dorian Gray has to learn in one of the most gruesome ways you could imagine.

Dorian Gray is the subject of a full-length portrait in oil by Basil Hallward, an artist who is impressed and infatuated by Dorian's beauty; he believes that Dorian's beauty is responsible for the new mode in his art as a painter. Through Basil, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, and he soon is enthralled by the aristocrat's hedonistic worldview: that beauty and sensual fulfillment are the only things worth pursuing in life.

Newly understanding that his beauty will fade, Dorian expresses the desire to sell his soul, to ensure that the picture, rather than he, will age and fade. The wish is granted, and Dorian pursues a libertine life of varied and amoral experiences, while staying young and beautiful; all the while his portrait ages and records every soul-corrupting sin

The three main characters are Basil Hallward, Lord Henry Wotton and Dorian Gray. Basil Hallward is an artist who after painting a picture of Dorian Gray becomes obsessed with him because of his beauty (the homosexual vs. art object love Basil feels towards Dorian are left vague, likely because of the time it was written).

Oscar Wilde's sentences are like small diamonds. They can be held and set against the light and moved around so that their different facets will shine and reflect the world around them. They are also so tightly self-contained with an inner perfect structure that cannot be easily modified. They are perfectly balanced

The level of cynicism and societal disregard that Wilde's characters display towards humanity is simply staggering.

Oscar Wilde's gift for prose and dialogue is magical. Arguably literature's greatest study of shallowness, vanity, casual cruelty and hedonistic selfishness, Wilde lays it down here with ABSOLUTE PERFECTION

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About the Author

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish playwright, poet and author of numerous short stories and one novel. Known for his biting wit, and a plentitude of aphorisms, he became one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era in London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day. Several of his plays continue to be widely performed, especially The Importance of Being Earnest. As the result of a widely covered series of trials, Wilde suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned for two years hard labour after being convicted of "gross indecency" with other men. After Wilde was released from prison he set sail for Dieppe by the night ferry. He never returned to Ireland or Britain, and died in poverty.