Book description
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY IRVINE WELSH
Dorian is a good-natured young man until he discovers the power of
his own exceptional beauty. As he gradually sinks deep into a
frivolous, glamorous world of selfish luxury, he apparently remains
physically unchanged by the stresses of his corrupt lifestyle and
untouched by age. But up in his attic, hidden behind a curtain, his
portrait tells a different story...
Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin on 16 October 1854. He studied at
Trinity College, Dublin and Magdalen College, Oxford. He then lived in
London and married Constance Lloyd in 1884. Wilde was a leader of the
Aesthetic Movement. He became famous because of the immense success of
his plays such as Lady Windemere's Fan and The Importance of
Being Earnest. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian
Gray, was first published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine
in 1890 but was revised in 1891 after moralistic negative reviews.
After a public scandal involving Wilde's relationship with Lord
Alfred Douglas, he was sentenced to two years' hard labour in Reading
Gaol for 'gross indecency'. His poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol
was published anonymously in 1898. Wilde never lived in England again
and died at the age of forty-six in Paris on 30 November 1900. He is
buried in Père Lachaise cemetery where admirers often leave the
lipstick marks of kisses on his tomb.
