The Picture of Dorian Gray (Penguin Classics)
by Oscar Wilde
List Price:
Our Price: $11.35
You Save: $8.65 (43%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $10.78 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Oscar WildeBrand: Penguin Group USA
Editor: Robert Mighall
Illustrator: Coralie Bickford-Smith
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-10-27
ISBN: 0141442468
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Penguin Classics Hardcover
Book Reviews of The Picture of Dorian Gray (Penguin Classics)
Book Review: Oscar Wilde knew something about human nature.
Summary: 5 Stars
This novel is one of the best classics available. It is more entertaining for its controversy value than for anything else. Lord Henry Wotton is probably the most engaging character in the entire novel, and one gets the impression he is the mouthpiece of Oscar Wilde himself. For the rest of this review, it will probably be enough to suggest you read it if you haven't, and include some quotes from Lord Henry:
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love; it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.
You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot.
I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.
She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm.
I can sympathize with everything, except suffering.
Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.
"Can you remember any great error that you committed in your early days, Duchess?" he asked, looking at her across the table.
"A great many, I fear," she cried. "Then commit them over again," he said gravely. "To get back one's youth,
one has merely to repeat one's follies."
Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.
Punctuality is the thief of time.
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.
The people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect - simply a confession of failure.
You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.
Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects.
A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.
It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.
Each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved.
To be popular one must be a mediocrity.
It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But it is better to be good than to be ugly.
A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on.
Anybody can be good in the country.
To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
Summary of The Picture of Dorian Gray (Penguin Classics)
The Picture of Dorian Gray was a succès de scandale. Early readers were shocked by its hints at unspeakable sins and the book was later used as evidence against Wilde at the Old Bailey in 1895.
Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray makes a Faustian bargain to sell his soul in exchange for eternal youth and beauty. Under the influence of Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, where he is able to indulge his desires while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only Dorian's picture bears the traces of his decadence.
A knowing account of a secret life and an analysis of the darker side of late Victorian society. The Picture of Dorian Gray offers a disturbing portrait of an individual coming face to face with the reality of his soul.
A lush, cautionary tale of a life of vileness and deception or a loving portrait of the aesthetic impulse run rampant? Why not both? After Basil Hallward paints a beautiful, young man's portrait, his subject's frivolous wish that the picture change and he remain the same comes true. Dorian Gray's picture grows aged and corrupt while he continues to appear fresh and innocent. After he kills a young woman, "as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife," Dorian Gray is surprised to find no difference in his vision or surroundings. "The roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily in my garden."
As Hallward tries to make sense of his creation, his epigram-happy friend Lord Henry Wotton encourages Dorian in his sensual quest with any number of Wildean paradoxes, including the delightful "When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy." But despite its many languorous pleasures, The Picture of Dorian Gray is an imperfect work. Compared to the two (voyeuristic) older men, Dorian is a bore, and his search for ever new sensations far less fun than the novel's drawing-room discussions. Even more oddly, the moral message of the novel contradicts many of Wilde's supposed aims, not least "no artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style." Nonetheless, the glamour boy gets his just deserts. And Wilde, defending Dorian Gray, had it both ways: "All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment."
Gay Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Gay Books
Mask for a Divaby Grant Michaels
St Martins Pr; Published: 1994-10; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $18.88
Price in other shops:
Sorry Now?by Mark Richard Zubro
St. Martin's Press; Published: 1992-10-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.95
Joseph and the Old Manby Christopher Davis
St. Martin's Press; Published: 1987-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.90
Price in other shops:
The Deaf-Mute Boyby Joseph Geraci
University of Wisconsin Press; Published: 2006-09-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $15.19
Price in other shops:
In Thrall: A Novelby Jane Delynn
University of Wisconsin Press; Published: 2003-10-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $16.28
Price in other shops:
Sex and Murder.com: A Paul Turner Mystery (Paul Turner Mysteries)by Mark Richard Zubro
Stonewall Inn Mysteries; Published: 2002-07-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.01
Price in other shops:
Bitch Slap: A Mark Manning Mystery (Mark Manning Mysteries (St. Martin's Paperback))by Michael Craft
Minotaur Books; Published: 2005-07-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.90
Price in other shops:
Picture of Dorian Gray (Penguin Classics)by Wilde Oscar
Penguin Classics; Published: 2009-08-13; Paperback; Book
A Boy's Own Story: A Novelby Edmund White
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2009-02-24; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.21
Price in other shops:
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Vintage Classics)by Oscar Wilde
Random House UK; Published: 2008-07-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.22
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Sense and Sensibility (Penguin Classics)by Jane Austen
Penguin Group USA; Penguin Classics Hardcover; Published: 2009-10-27; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $10.99
Price in other shops:
Gulliver's Travelsby Jonathan Swift
Penguin Group USA; Penguin Classics Hardcover; Published: 2011-04-26; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.35
Price in other shops:
Cranford (Penguin Classics)by Elizabeth Gaskell
Penguin Group USA; Penguin Classics Hardcover; Published: 2009-10-27; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.16
Price in other shops:
Great Expectations (Penguin Classics)by Charles Dickens
Penguin Group USA; Penguin Classics Hardcover; Published: 2009-10-27; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.35
Price in other shops:
The Odyssey (Penguin Classics)by Homer
Penguin Group USA; Penguin Classics Hardcover; Published: 2010-03-10; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.34
Price in other shops:
Oliver Twist (Penguin Classics)by Charles Dickens
Penguin Group USA; Penguin Classics Hardcover; Published: 2010-09-28; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.35
Price in other shops:
Dracula (Penguin Classics)by Bram Stoker
Penguin Group USA; Penguin Classics Hardcover; Published: 2011-04-20; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.25
Price in other shops:
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (Penguin Classics)by Lewis Carroll
Penguin Group USA; Penguin Classics Hardcover; Published: 2010-03-10; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.35
Price in other shops:
Wuthering Heights (Penguin Classics)by Emily Bronte
Penguin Group USA; Penguin Classics Hardcover; Published: 2009-10-27; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.17
Price in other shops:
The Hound of the Baskervilles (Penguin Classics)by Arthur Conan Doyle
Penguin Group USA; Penguin Classics Hardcover; Published: 2010-09-28; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.35
Price in other shops: