The Picture of Dorian Gray

by Wilde, Oscar; Mighall, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780141439570
• ISBN10: 0141439572
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-02-04
• Publisher: PENGUIN

Summary

"This revised Norton Critical Edition, like its predecessor, is the only edition available that includes both the 1890 Lippincott's and the 1891 book version of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Under the editorial guidance of Wilde scholar Michael Patrick Gillespie, students have the opportunity to read comparatively both published versions of this controversial novel." ""Backgrounds" and "Reviews and Reactions" allow readers to gauge The Picture of Dorian Gray's sensational reception when the 1890 version appeared and to consider the heated public debate over art and morality that followed its publication. Joris-Karl Huysmans, Walter Pater, and Oscar Wilde offer a sense of the diverse opinions on these topics. Eight contemporary reviews and comments on the novel are reprinted, among them four opinions from the St. James's Gazette immediately after publication in 1890, each followed by Oscar Wilde's vehement reply." ""Criticism" includes seven new essays on the novel that reflect key changes in interpretive theory in recent years and reveal the broad range of perspectives associated with Wilde and The Picture of Dorian Gray. Simon Joyce, Donald L. Lawler, Sheldon W. Liebman, Maureen O'Connor, Ellie Ragland-Sullivan, John Paul Riquelme, and Michael Patrick Gillespie provide their varied assessments. A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography are also included."--BOOK JACKET.

Author Biography

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was born in Dublin. He wrote witty and satirical plays including The Importance of Being Earnest, as well as short stories, fairy tales, essays, and poetry.

Robert Mighall edited Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Tales of Terror for Penguin Classics.

Peter Ackroyd is an award-winning novelist, critic, and biographer.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. vii
Note on the Text	p. xvii
Select Bibliography	p. xix
A Chronology of Oscar Wilde	p. xxi
The Preface	p. xxiii
	p. 1
	p. 12
	p. 25
	p. 36
	p. 49
	p. 59
	p. 66
	p. 76
	p. 88
	p. 96
	p. 104
	p. 120
	p. 126
	p. 132
	p. 143
	p. 151
	p. 158
	p. 164
	p. 172
	p. 180
Explanatory Notes	p. 185
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Dorian made no answer, but passed listlessly in front of his picture and turned towards it. When he saw it he drew back, and his cheeks flushed for a moment with pleasure. A look of joy came into his eyes, as if he had recognized himself for the first time. He stood there motionless and in wonder, dimly conscious that Hallward was speaking to him, but not catching the meaning of his words. The sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation. He had never felt it before. Basil Hallwards's compliments has seemed to him to be merely the charming exaggerations of friendship. He had listened to them, laughed at them, forgotten them. They had not influenced his nature. Then had come Lord Henry Wotton with his strange panegyric on youth, his terrible warning of its brevity. That had stirred him at the time, and now, as he stood gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness, the full reality of the description flashed across him. Yes, there would be a day when his face would be wrinkled and wizen, his eyes dim and colourless, the grace of his figure broken and deformed. The scarlet would pass away from his lips, and the gold steal from his hair. The life that was to make his soul would mar his body. He would become dreadful, hideous, and uncouth.

As he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck though him like a knife, and made each delicate fibre of his nature quiver. His eyes deepened into amethyst, and across them came a mist of tears. He felt as is a hand of ice had been laid upon his heart.

'Don't you like it?' cried Hallward at last, stung a little by the lad's silence, not understanding what it meant.

'Of course he likes it,' said Lord Henry. 'Who wouldn't like it? It is one of the greatest things in modern art. I will give you anything you like to ask for it. I must have it.'

'It is not my property, Harry.'

'Whose property is it?'

'Dorian's, of course,' answered the painter.

'He's a very lucky fellow.'

'How sad it is!' murmured Dorian Gary, with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. 'How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. It will never be older than this particular day of June...If it were only the other way!