Oscar Wilde Books

Oscar Wilde was one of the foremost representatives of Aestheticism, a movement based on the notion that art exists for no other purpose than its existence itself ("l'art pour l'art"), not for the purpose of social and moral enlightenment. Born in Dublin and a graduate of Oxford's Magdalen College, he initially worked primarily as a journalist, editor and lecturer, but gradually turned to writing and produced his most acclaimed works in the six-year span from 1890 to 1895, roughly coinciding with the period of his romantic involvement with Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas, sixteen years his junior. Douglas's strained relationship with his father, John Sholto Douglas, Marquees of Queensberry, eventually resulted in a series of confrontations between Wilde and the Marquees, which first led to a libel suit brought by Wilde against his lover's father (who had openly accused Wilde of "posing as a sodomite" and threatened to disown his son if he didn't give up his acquaintance with the writer) and subsequently to two criminal trials against Wilde for "gross indecencies," based on a law generally interpreted to prohibit homosexual relationships. Sentenced to a two-year term of "hard labor" in Reading Gaol, Wilde emerged from prison in 1897 a spiritually, physically and financially broken man and, unable to continue living in England or Ireland, after three years' wanderings throughout Europe died in 1900 of cerebral meningitis, barely 46 years old.

"The Picture of Dorian Gray," Wilde's only novel besides seven plays as well as several works of short fiction, poetry, nonfiction and two fairy tale collections originally written for his two sons, is critical to an understanding of Wilde's body of work and his personality primarily for two reasons: First, because it constitutes one of his earliest fully accomplished formulations of Aestheticism, and secondly because of its undeniable undercurrent of homoeroticism; an inclination which, after a six-year marriage widely thought to initially have been a true love match, Wilde had begun to explore more openly around the time of the novel's creation (1890). The story's title character is an exceptionally handsome young man who, both in the eyes of the artist tasked to paint his portrait, Basil Hallward, and in those of their somewhat older friend Lord Henry Wotton, epitomizes perfect beauty and is coveted by both men for that very reason. Seduced by hedonistic Lord Henry into believing that beauty can literally justify anything, including any act of immorality, Dorian sells his soul for maintaining his beautiful appearance, letting his portrait age in his stead. (In that, his character resembles Goethe's and Marlowe's Faust.) He then quickly turns from an innocent youth into a cruel and calculating man whom society, in its shallow adherence to appearances, nonetheless never associates with any of the results of his cruelty, never looking beyond the surface of his handsome exterior and assuming that a man so beautiful must necessarily also be good. Ultimately it is Dorian himself who brings about his own downfall when he is no longer able to face the manifestation of his evilness in Basil Hallward's picture.

Upon its initial publication in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1890, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" was widely scorned as immoral by a public neither familiar with nor particularly open to the concepts of Aestheticism and its mockery of middle class morality, and repulsed by the thinly veiled homoerotic relationship of the novel's protagonists. Wilde republished the work the following year, adding a preface designed to explain his views on art. Yet, it was that preface which, along with several of his other publications and his written exchanges with Lord Alfred Douglas, ultimately would play a devastating role in his trials, where Queensberry's attorney would come to use an excerpt from that very preface - "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written" - to extract from Wilde statements to the effect that any book inspiring a sense of beauty (including, as implied in the attorney's question, an "immoral" book, if "The Picture of Dorian Gray" could be qualified as such) was well-written and therefore commendable; that only Philistines, brutes and illiterates - whose views on art he considered invariably stupid and for which he therefore didn't "care twopence" - could consider this novel "perverted," and that the majority of the reading public would probably not be able to draw a proper distinction between a good and a bad book. It was testimony such as this, as well as the impending confrontation with a number of male witnesses ready to testify as to the nature of their relationship with Wilde, that not only caused the author's attorney to convince his client to drop the libel suit against Queensberry but also opened the door for Wilde's own subsequent prosecution.

If "The Picture of Dorian Gray" has a central theme besides the supremacy of beauty and the depiction of a society primarily interested in appearances, it is a call for individuality: Dorian's cruelty is brought out only after he allows himself to be influenced by Lord Henry's equally seductive and cynical hedonism; and similarly, Basil Hallward's blind idolizing of Dorian eventually proves fatal for the painter. - Wilde's only novel is one of the first and most poignant expressions of his own individualism; but unlike his protagonist, who ultimately pays a ghastly prize for selling his soul and giving up his individuality, Wilde paid as high a price for maintaining his. Like Dorian, he knew that "[e]ach of us has Heaven and Hell in him," and although this novel's preface ends with the provocative statement that "[a]ll art is quite useless," it was the very fact that Wilde put his entire being into his art that ultimately destroyed him. But like beauty, which is finally restored to perfection in Dorian Gray's portrait, Wilde's works have stood the test of time; and not merely for their countless, pricelessly witty epigrams. They're as well worth a read as ever.

Basil, who up until now was a mediocre painter after meeting Dorian Gray a young Adonis, was inspired to create a masterpiece of which he puts himself into. Against Basil's wishes, Dorian Gray is influenced by Basil's friend Lord Henry. Dorian looks at his portrait and realizes that while the portrait will stay young forever, he will grow old; so Dorian makes a wish that if only he could stay young forever and the portrait can age.

At first Dorian does not realize his wishes been granted. He falls in love with a beautiful young actress who is every woman that Shakespeare ever wrote about. But once again due to Lord Henry's influence, he realizes that she's just a common girl.

Starting with absent-minded acts Dorian slowly sinks into debauchery. And with every new act his picture becomes more grotesque while Dorian stays is young and as innocent looking as the day his picture was painted.
What will become of Dorian?
What will become of Dorian's painting?
What would you do if you were Dorian?

Oscar Wilde paints a picture himself as he describes Dorian Gray's dilemma. And we as readers travel with Dorian as each decision is made. In some places in the story Oscar Wilde seems to drag on and on with detail; however we find that this detail is necessary to set the next scene.

Oscar Wilde himself led a risky life that lead to a jail sentence; is attitudes can be seen in the dialogues in this book.

The Picture of Dorian Gray Starring: George Sanders, Hurd Hatfield

Basil, who up until now was a mediocre painter after meeting Dorian Gray a young Adonis, was inspired to create a masterpiece of which he puts himself into. Against Basil's wishes, Dorian Gray is influenced by Basil's friend Lord Henry. Dorian looks at his portrait and realizes that while the portrait will stay young forever, he will grow old; so Dorian makes a wish that if only he could stay young forever and the portrait can age.

At first Dorian does not realize his wishes been granted. He falls in love with a beautiful young actress who is every woman that Shakespeare ever wrote about. But once again due to Lord Henry's influence, he realizes that she's just a common girl.

Starting with absent-minded acts Dorian slowly sinks into debauchery. And with every new act his picture becomes more grotesque while Dorian stays is young and as innocent looking as the day his picture was painted.
What will become of Dorian?
What will become of Dorian's painting?
What would you do if you were Dorian?

Oscar Wilde paints a picture himself as he describes Dorian Gray's dilemma. And we as readers travel with Dorian as each decision is made. In some places in the story Oscar Wilde seems to drag on and on with detail; however we find that this detail is necessary to set the next scene.

Oscar Wilde himself led a risky life that lead to a jail sentence; is attitudes can be seen in the dialogues in this book.

Oscar Wilde was one of the foremost representatives of Aestheticism, a movement based on the notion that art exists for no other purpose than its existence itself ("l'art pour l'art"), not for the purpose of social and moral enlightenment. Born in Dublin and a graduate of Oxford's Magdalen College, he initially worked primarily as a journalist, editor and lecturer, but gradually turned to writing and produced his most acclaimed works in the six-year span from 1890 to 1895, roughly coinciding with the period of his romantic involvement with Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas, sixteen years his junior. Douglas's strained relationship with his father, John Sholto Douglas, Marquees of Queensberry, eventually resulted in a series of confrontations between Wilde and the Marquees, which first led to a libel suit brought by Wilde against his lover's father (who had openly accused Wilde of "posing as a sodomite" and threatened to disown his son if he didn't give up his acquaintance with the writer) and subsequently to two criminal trials against Wilde for "gross indecencies," based on a law generally interpreted to prohibit homosexual relationships. Sentenced to a two-year term of "hard labor" in Reading Gaol, Wilde emerged from prison in 1897 a spiritually, physically and financially broken man and, unable to continue living in England or Ireland, after three years' wanderings throughout Europe died in 1900 of cerebral meningitis, barely 46 years old.

"The Picture of Dorian Gray," Wilde's only novel besides seven plays as well as several works of short fiction, poetry, nonfiction and two fairy tale collections originally written for his two sons, is critical to an understanding of Wilde's body of work and his personality primarily for two reasons: First, because it constitutes one of his earliest fully accomplished formulations of Aestheticism, and secondly because of its undeniable undercurrent of homoeroticism; an inclination which, after a six-year marriage widely thought to initially have been a true love match, Wilde had begun to explore more openly around the time of the novel's creation (1890). The story's title character is an exceptionally handsome young man who, both in the eyes of the artist tasked to paint his portrait, Basil Hallward, and in those of their somewhat older friend Lord Henry Wotton, epitomizes perfect beauty and is coveted by both men for that very reason. Seduced by hedonistic Lord Henry into believing that beauty can literally justify anything, including any act of immorality, Dorian sells his soul for maintaining his beautiful appearance, letting his portrait age in his stead. (In that, his character resembles Goethe's and Marlowe's Faust.) He then quickly turns from an innocent youth into a cruel and calculating man whom society, in its shallow adherence to appearances, nonetheless never associates with any of the results of his cruelty, never looking beyond the surface of his handsome exterior and assuming that a man so beautiful must necessarily also be good. Ultimately it is Dorian himself who brings about his own downfall when he is no longer able to face the manifestation of his evilness in Basil Hallward's picture.

Upon its initial publication in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1890, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" was widely scorned as immoral by a public neither familiar with nor particularly open to the concepts of Aestheticism and its mockery of middle class morality, and repulsed by the thinly veiled homoerotic relationship of the novel's protagonists. Wilde republished the work the following year, adding a preface designed to explain his views on art. Yet, it was that preface which, along with several of his other publications and his written exchanges with Lord Alfred Douglas, ultimately would play a devastating role in his trials, where Queensberry's attorney would come to use an excerpt from that very preface - "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written" - to extract from Wilde statements to the effect that any book inspiring a sense of beauty (including, as implied in the attorney's question, an "immoral" book, if "The Picture of Dorian Gray" could be qualified as such) was well-written and therefore commendable; that only Philistines, brutes and illiterates - whose views on art he considered invariably stupid and for which he therefore didn't "care twopence" - could consider this novel "perverted," and that the majority of the reading public would probably not be able to draw a proper distinction between a good and a bad book. It was testimony such as this, as well as the impending confrontation with a number of male witnesses ready to testify as to the nature of their relationship with Wilde, that not only caused the author's attorney to convince his client to drop the libel suit against Queensberry but also opened the door for Wilde's own subsequent prosecution.

If "The Picture of Dorian Gray" has a central theme besides the supremacy of beauty and the depiction of a society primarily interested in appearances, it is a call for individuality: Dorian's cruelty is brought out only after he allows himself to be influenced by Lord Henry's equally seductive and cynical hedonism; and similarly, Basil Hallward's blind idolizing of Dorian eventually proves fatal for the painter. - Wilde's only novel is one of the first and most poignant expressions of his own individualism; but unlike his protagonist, who ultimately pays a ghastly prize for selling his soul and giving up his individuality, Wilde paid as high a price for maintaining his. Like Dorian, he knew that "[e]ach of us has Heaven and Hell in him," and although this novel's preface ends with the provocative statement that "[a]ll art is quite useless," it was the very fact that Wilde put his entire being into his art that ultimately destroyed him. But like beauty, which is finally restored to perfection in Dorian Gray's portrait, Wilde's works have stood the test of time; and not merely for their countless, pricelessly witty epigrams. They're as well worth a read as ever.

Edited by Richard Aldington. Stories include the picture of dorian gray, salome, the importance of being earnest, de profundis, many poems and the selfish giant.

This edition of Oscar Wilde's work - in addition to its inclusion of much personal correspondence - is a fascinating look at the author and, notably, his personal travails.

The novel, of course, and the plays are classics, but I found the letters to be a juicy narrative all their own. The twists and turns of his doomed affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, affectionately called "Bosie" in touching - and bitter - love notes from prison, are here to peruse. Reading them, you get a sense of Wilde's personal feelings at the time of his famed trial and arrest for sodomy, his anguish at losing Bosie and going to jail. It's fascinating, juicy stuff - made all the more touching by the fact that it all occurred without shame, in plain view, over 100 years ago.

Wilde's a great character, a great author, a good role model for gay life and a hysterical wit. And this book is a must.

William Gordon did a fabulous job compiling this gem of a collection. This is a "must" for any writer for both inspiration and information. I reach for it often in my struggle to write my second book. I appreciate the varied resources from all kinds of backgrounds (and different ages), but most of all, they are writers who have gone down the same path as I.

Writers love words and Bill Gordon loves writers. Hehascompiledover 170 pages of categorized quotations from more than 600authors. This book is recommended to all writers, not just for yourown enjoyment but as a resource. When it is not on your nightstand, it will be within easy reach of your desk, next to your dictionary.

The illustrations are beautiful and sweet. The story (if you're not familiar with the Wilde story) will have a surprising ending. The book is good for a Christian family, especially for a family facing death or wanting to explain death or perhaps for Good Friday.

Oscar Wilde's Selfish Giant is retold by Fiona Waters and will require either good reading skills or parental assistance. A garden filled with children and beauty is changed by a selfish giant's decision to bar children in this tale of adjustment and change.

A charming, philosophical fairy tale by Oscar Wilde about a baby boy found by a poor woodcutter in a bright and beautiful star. The woodcutter adopts the boy, who grows up extremely beautiful but also arrogant and cruel. He blinds and maims the animals of the forest, and shows no pity to those who where weakly or ill-favoured.

One day he cruelly turns away a beggar-woman, who is his mother, and his beauty is turned into ugliness. He begins a quest to find his mother to beg her forgiveness. Written for older children and the young of heart , in the fine prose of Oscar Wilde.

When a poor woodcutter finds a baby abandoned in the woods, he takes the boy home and raises him as his own. The boy grows up to be beautiful in the extreme, but also arrogant and cruel. When his mother shows up a dirty beggar, he rejects her, and is cursed by having his beauty turned to ugliness. Setting out to find his mother, and gain her forgiveness, the star-child learns a painful lesson in humility and generosity.

This is a touching story written by a master storyteller. Fit for children or adults, it is a touching story with a great lesson in humanity.

Who was that Man ? is a meditation and celebration of the form and meaning of gay life in London in the 19th century and the 1970s and 80s. Neil Bartlett puts together a collage of thoughts, excerpts and pictures to find the common threads of behavior and the disparate ways of understanding. He analyzes Wilde's work and life to find its relevance and irrelevance to today; the ways in which Wilde's downfall and persecution cast its shadow; the not very hidden subtext of all of Wilde's work that Wilde desperately denied as he fought for his life. Bartlett has ransacked the British Museum Library and the Collected Works of Oscar Wilde to uncover and restore forgotten history. Read together with Richard Ellman's biography and Neil Mc Kenna's Secret Life of Oscar Wilde, this book illuminates and goes far to explain Wilde's intentionally fascinating life and works. But more than that it casts light on the whole swath of gay experience.

A gay Londoner of the 80s goes searching for his roots and finds Oscar Wilde, a complex figure early on in the history of the cultural and social construction of twentieth-century homosexuality. If you're interested in Wilde, this is a very good book to read along with Richard Ellman's more standard biography.

This is an absolutely great book and it's too bad it's out of print and nobody seems to have read it! I have been listening to the audio tape in the car. The reader is a little over-dramatic in places...like he makes a walk down the street sound as breathless and ominous as a murder scene...but on the whole, he's excellent, too. It has mystery, wit, excitement, suspense! And Oscar Wilde to boot. It's completely captivating...bring it back!

This was the best bit of historical fiction I have ever read. I can't believe it's out of print. In an attempt to boost his income, Oscar Wilde tours on a lecture/performance circuit across the USA. Unfortunately, as his retinue crosses the West, dead prostitutes start appearing in ever city he and his entourage visit. He becomes a prime suspect, and attempts to solve the mystery himelf with, as he puts it, "...a systematic application of the poetic imagination." It is a wonderful story, with all the elements of great Old West Literature, including horses, trains, gunfights, Doc Holladay, a little sex, and a herd of goats.

This compendium of quotes from Oscar Wilde is arranged by subject matter alphabetically and provides a great deal of entertainment for $7 bucks. Not to mention it is the ultimate source for witty quotations to make you the life of the party. Seriously, a great book to page through at random for some laughs and thought provoking witticisms from the most quotable modern author.

Oscar Wilde once said "Drama is the meeting place of art and life." In this essential, compact volume Ralph Keyes leaves a trail to that corner by gathering the flamboyant author's thorniest, at times most insightful quotes and anecdotes. Keyes uses Wilde's plays, reviews, letters, interrogations, even conversational repartee (given its own section) which remained Wilde's signature to his time.

Keyes divides Wilde's epigrams and puns into brief, easily readable sections. Wilde twists traditional views on permanent truths and those of his day: altruism ("Charity creates a multitude of sins.") history ("History is merely gossip.") theology, poverty, dissent ("Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.")

Above all, Wilde (through Keyes' selections) quips and dissects each of the fine arts (music, prose, painting) and roles for creator, viewer, interpreter. He addresses the writer ("Even prophets correct their proofs.") critic ("Criticism is the highest form of autobiography"), and artist ("Like the Greek gods, artists are known only to each other.")

Amid his fast-paced one liners on male-female relations you sense how Wilde viewed marriage over and above his well-known bromide, "Divorces are made in heaven." The book ends with Wilde explaining and defending the homosexual relationship he called "the love that dare not speak its name". Whether or not you accept Wilde's lifestyle preferences, his eloquent, sad defense of a letter he wrote a younger man is moving as he describes the unique merge of intellect and youthful energy which to him formed "the noblest sort of affection." It is as close to heartfelt as anyone could get who once said, "A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal."

Oscar Wilde was parodied, villified, and eventually imprisoned for his beliefs and flamboyance. But he eventually influenced artists from George Bernard Shaw to John Lennon, staking a claim as the earliest example of a postmodern artist. This book helps introduce Wilde's full books and plays (Keyes references them consistently and provides a full bibliography), or helps you reference witty, intellectual (or psuedo-intellectual, as Wilde might have preferred) quotes for any occassion. (As to plagarizing, Wilde himself called it, "the privilege of the appreciative man.") His full literary courses are nutritious and filling enough, but "The Wit and Wisdom of Oscar Wilde" is as savory when reading or writing as salt is when dining.