The Picture of Dorian Gray

Description

Dorian Gray is young, arrogant, and devastatingly handsome. Confronted by his beauty in the form of a portrait, and struck by the terrible realization that he will age, Dorian wishes to retain his charms forever and finds his desire granted. He abandons himself to a life of hedonism, vice and murder, yet his face remains unmarked by his evil. But, hidden in his attic, the painting ages and corrupts, and one day Dorian must stand face to face with the man he has become. A perfect depiction of fin-de-siecle decadence, Oscar Wilde's only novel highlights the tension between the polished surface and murky depths of Victorian high society. This beautiful Macmillan Collector's Library edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray features an afterword by the playwright and actor Peter Harness. Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. He studied there, at Trinity College, and then at Oxford, where he founded the cult of aestheticism. He published several books of stories, and one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, in 1891. He had many successes as a playwright, first with Lady Windermere's Fan in 1892, and all his plays were performed in London between 1892 and 1895. A dazzling wit and flamboyant figure, Wilde's career was cut short after his homosexuality was exposed, and he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment in 1895. Released in 1897, he fled to France where he died a broken man in 1900.