Bøker av Oscar Wilde

Horror hides behind an attractive face in 'The Picture of Dorian Gray', Oscar Wilde's tale of a notorious Victorian libertine and his life of evil excesses.

With an Introduction and Notes by John M.L. Drew, University of Buckingham.Wilde's only novel, first published in 1890, is a brilliantly designed puzzle, intended to tease conventional minds with its exploration of the myriad interrelationships between art, life, and consequence. From its provocative Preface, challenging the reader to believe in 'art for art's sake', to its sensational conclusion, the story self-consciously experiments with the notion of sin as an element of design.Yet Wilde himself underestimated the consequences of his experiment, and its capacity to outrage the Victorian establishment. Its words returned to haunt him in his court appearances in 1895, and he later recalled the 'note of doom' which runs like 'a purple thread' through its carefully crafted prose.

Dorian Gray gives his soul for eternal youth. While his portrait changes hideously, reflecting his crimes and corruption, he remains outwardly flawless. This new edition uses the 1891 expanded text and shows how Wilde transformed his many sources.

'It would be unfair to expect other people to be as remarkable as oneself'Wilde's celebrated witticisms on the dangers of sincerity, duplicitous biographers, the stupidity of the English - and his own genius. One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.

The abridged downloadable audiobook edition of Oscar Wildes classic tale of corrupted innocence and debauchery, The Picture of Dorian Gray, read by John Moffatt. Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life; indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence. The novel was a succs de scandale and the book was later used as evidence against Wilde at the Old Bailey in 1895. It has lost none of its power to fascinate and disturb.

Over 120 years after Oscar Wilde submitted The Picture of Dorian Gray for publication, the uncensored version of his novel appears here for the first time in a paperback edition. This volume restores material, including instances of graphic homosexual content, removed by the novel's first editor, who feared it would be "e;offensive"e; to Victorians.

Wilde's short fiction includes such masterpieces as 'The Happy Prince', 'The Selfish Giant', 'Lord Arthur Savile's Crime' and 'The Canterville Ghost', as well as the daring narrative experiments of 'The Portrait of Mr. W. H.' and 'Poems in Prose'. This edition shows how they continue to the enthral and challenge the reader.

During his prolific career, Oscar Wilde also wrote several stories for children and fairy tales. In these stories Wilde really expressed his affection for aesthetic writing. His children''s tales are assembled in his two short story collections: The Happy Prince and Other Tales: The Happy Prince The Nightingale and the Rose The Devoted Friend The Selfish Giant The Remarkable Rocket A House of Pomegranates: The Young King The Birthday of the Infanta The Fisherman and His Soul The Star-Child

The handsome but susceptible Dorian Gray is pulled into the hedonism of London's high society, where he falls under the pernicious influence of Lord Henry Wotton. Oscar Wilde's nightmarish tale gorges on sin, corruption and vanity, with a series of dark twists and a desperate Faustian deal. With a new biography and a detailed new glossary.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde. It appearing as the lead story in the July 1890 issue of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. The magazine's editors feared the story was indecent as submitted, so they censored roughly 500 words, without Wilde's knowledge, before publication. Even so, the story was greeted with outrage by British reviewers, some of whom suggested that Wilde should be prosecuted on moral grounds, leading Wilde to defend the novel aggressively in letters to the British press. Wilde later revised the story for book publication, making substantial alterations, deleting controversial passages, adding new chapters and including an aphoristic Preface which has since become famous in its own right. The amended version was published by Ward, Lock and Company in April 1891. Some scholars believe that Wilde would today have wanted us to read the version he originally submitted to Lippincott's. Both the 1890 and 1891 versions are included in this publication

The four great comedies of Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, were all written at the height of the controversial Irish author's powers in his last, doomed decade, the 1890s. They remain among the most-loved, and most-quoted, of all drama in the English language. Along with Salome, his darkly decadent dramatization of the Bible story, these immortal plays continue to pack theatres, and have been adapted for every kind of media. This Macmillan Collector's Library edition of The Importance of Being Earnest & Other Plays echoes the book form in which Wilde originally insisted his plays were published, and includes illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley and an afterword by Ned Halley.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.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY IRVINE WELSHDorian 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.

Selection includes The Portrait of Mr W.H., Wilde's defence of Dorian Gray, reviews, and the writings from 'Intentions' (1891): 'The Decay of Lying, 'Pen, Pencil, Poison', and 'The Critic as Artist'.Wilde is familiar to us as the ironic critic behind the social comedies, as the creator of the beautiful and doomed Dorian Gray, as the flamboyant aesthete and the demonised homosexual. This volume presents us with a different Wilde. Wilde emerges here as a deep and serious reader of literature and philosophy, and an eloquent and original thinker about society and art.

The Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde is the only truly complete and authoritative single-volume edition of Oscar Wilde's works, and is available in both paperback and this hardback edition.

Since then the stories have been constantly reprinted and, despite the author's disclaimer, children have made the tales their own, a particular favourite being 'The Selfish Giant' - the highly moral story of the giant who banished children from his garden, so that spring never came.

"All art," Oscar Wilde once announced, "is quite useless." Selected here are some of his finest prose works on the subject of art - useless, illuminating, artificial, uplifting, radical, gorgeous, boring, sublime - and his most brilliant aphorisms on the creative life. Whether lamenting the crass urge to hold art to realist or natural standards or arguing against morality as a guiding principle, Wilde defends the artist while delighting the audience.