The Picture of Dorian Gray
- Downloads
- 1K+
- First published
- 1890
- Pages
- 214
Listen to The Picture of Dorian Gray Audiobook Free
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Chapter 01
37:44 -
Chapter 02
38:24 -
Chapter 03
37:28 -
Chapter 04
15:33 -
Chapter 05
27:42 -
Chapter 06
36:47 -
Chapter 07
25:01 -
Chapter 08
22:38 -
Chapter 09
51:59 -
Chapter 10
16:30 -
Chapter 11
16:44 -
Chapter 12
30:27 -
Chapter 13
28:47
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) is a public domain work.
The audio edition streams in the page. There is no audio file to download.
About this book
The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only novel by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), first published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1890 and in revised book form in 1891. The story of the beautiful young man whose portrait ages and corrupts while he remains untouched has become one of the central myths of English literature: Dorian, under the influence of the witty hedonist Lord Henry Wotton, pursues a double life of refined pleasure and hidden cruelty, while the painting locked in his attic records every sin on its face. The novel scandalised Victorian reviewers and was later used against Wilde at his trials. It survives as the definitive fiction of aestheticism, quoted everywhere for Lord Henry's epigrams, and remains the most read of all Wilde's works.
From the opening pages
The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddlebags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid jade-faced painters of Tokio who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.
In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, such public excitement, and gave rise to so many strange conjectures.
As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and, closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake.
Contents
About the author
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Public domain book This work is in the public domain and free of copyright. Anyone may read, download and share it.
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Book facts
- Author
- Oscar Wilde
- First published
- 1890
- Reading time
- About 6 hours
- Pages
- 214
- Language
- English
- Genre
- Fiction Books
- Formats
- PDF, EPUB, Read online, Audiobook
- Audio read by
- John Gonzalez