The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde, 1890
A beautiful young man wishes his portrait would age in his place. It is a sharp, funny, then frightening study of vanity, charm and moral drift, still uncomfortably current.
Oscar Wilde
1854–1900
Wilde writes with such charm and precision that the wit lands before the sting does. The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest share a delight in clever talk and a sharp eye on vanity, but they pull in different directions: one darkens into something frightening, the other stays light and quick. Start with The Importance of Being Earnest if you want the wit alone, or The Picture of Dorian Gray if you want to see what that wit looks like when it curdles.
Feels like morality, love and nature.
Start with The Picture of Dorian Gray.
The novel first ran in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1890 in thirteen chapters. For the 1891 book Wilde expanded it to twenty and added the famous preface about art.
What it feels like to envy your own portrait.
“I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day—mock me horribly!” The hot tears welled into his eyes; he tore his hand away and, flinging himself on the divan, he buried his face in the cushions, as though he was praying. Books by Oscar Wilde
The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde, 1895
Two friends invent imaginary relatives to escape their obligations, and their inventions collide in one country house full of people who talk in epigrams.
The Happy Prince, and Other Tales
Oscar Wilde, 1888
Five short fairy tales where a statue, a nightingale, a giant and a boastful firework teach tenderness and vanity with a sharp wit, in less time than a commute.
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