About This Book

... "How sad it is!" murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. ... If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that — for that — I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!" ...

About Oscar Wilde

(1844-1912) The Irish-born author and playwrite, Oscar Wilde, was the son of a famous surgeon and of a mother who dabbled in writing. He became notorious at Oxford both as a dilettante and a wit, affecting the long hair and languid elegance of a poet. He married in 1884, and four years later wrote several charming stories for his two small children. The Picture of Dorian Gray was written in 1891, followed in the next years by several highly successful plays. But although his wit and talent made him the darling of London, his private life violated the norms of Victorian society, and in 1895, he was tried and convicted for having shared what he, himself, called "the love that dare not speak its name" and was sentenced to two years imprisonment at hard labor. By the time he was released, his health was seriously impaired and he died in Paris three years later.