dorian gray essay themes

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar wilde, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

The Mortality of Beauty and Youth

The trouble starts when Henry warns Dorian that his extraordinary beauty and youth will fade, and tells him to make the most of it. Dorian’s beauty is such that people are astonished by it and all of his advantages seem to come from it, even if he has got an interesting personality and wealth. With Henry’s words ringing in his ears, Dorian immediately views Basil ’s portrait of him in a new light. Rather than…

Surfaces, Objects and Appearances

Beauty is skin-deep in Dorian ’s circle of friends. He is welcomed and adored because of his beautiful appearance and even when his sins ruin lives, he always has a certain power because of his attractiveness. Dorian is at his peak when he is unaware of his own beauty, but when conscious of it, his life becomes about surface and appearance. His taste for fashion grows; he loves tapestries and jewels, very flat, decorative objects.

Art and the Imitation of Life

The novel opens with a theory of the purpose of art, which Wilde reasons out until he reaches that “all art is quite useless”. Whether or not this is some kind of warning from the narrator, we as readers don’t know, but what follows certainly seems to illustrate his point. It presents art in many forms and the danger of it when it is taken too literally or believed too deeply. It starts with a…

The power of one to affect another is a theme that pervades the novel. At first, Basil is influenced by his model Dorian . On a personal level, he is confused and changed by his romantic feelings, but Dorian’s influence is also more far-reaching, actually seeming to change Basil's ability for painting, and to change the painting itself in an almost supernatural way. Influence here describes an almost chemical change that one can assign to…

Women and Men

Lord Henry ’s philosophies frequently criticize women and marriage, and the era of Dorian Gray ’s London society, and indeed Oscar Wilde’s, becomes vivid to us in his dialogue. He says that women are a “decorative sex”, and that there are always only a few worth talking to. We see his marriage with Lady Victoria Wotton as a very separate affair, both parties leading distinct lives and meeting the other occasionally. When Victoria leaves him…

The Picture of Dorian Gray Themes

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Main Theme of The Picture of Dorian Gray – Introduction

The Picture of Dorian Gray is set in the late 19th century in London, England. The city provides an appropriate backdrop for a tale about beauty, hedonism, and pleasure-seeking lifestyles. At various points in the novel, the seedy nature of large cities is highlighted as Dorian, a wealthy young man, visits some of the more ragged theaters of town and eventually begins to spend time in opium dens. This emphasizes the uglier side of a life all about the pursuit of pleasure and beauty.

In terms of motifs, the novel’s most obvious one is the titular picture of Dorian Gray. When the artist Basil Hallward becomes enthralled with Dorian’s beauty and winds up painting the portrait that becomes his masterpiece, the realization hits Dorian that he will one day lose his attractiveness as he ages. Dorian allows the portrait to carry that burden for him as he ignores his conscious in pursuit of a life of pleasure and sin. However, the portrait serves as an external source of a conscious for Dorian and it torments him so that he hides it away from any other potential wandering eyes.

Another motif comes in a classic form as the color white. In the beginning of the novel, Dorian starts out as an impressionable and innocent young man. Throughout the story, the color white pops up again and again to remind the audience that Dorian has forsaken his innocence. Finally, a motif of homoerotic male relationships also surfaces throughout the tale. Basil adores Dorian’s beauty and becomes mildly obsessed with Dorian as his subject for a while. Lord Henry wishes to seduce Dorian to live a hedonistic life so that he can watch what results. Dorian threatens to blackmail Campbell and it is implied that perhaps he has some potential homosexual information about him.

Dorian Gray Themes

Here’s a list of major themes in The Picture of Dorian Gray .

• The Purpose of Art.
• Youth and Beauty.
• The Superficiality of Society.
• The Dangers of Social Influence.

Theme of The Purpose of Art

The book explores the purpose of experiencing art in the process of trying to live a life of pleasure. In this case, a painting ends up bearing the uglier consequences of a life of pleasure in a way that forces the owner to acknowledge the burden of his sins. This is seen in Basil’s experiences as well as that he feels he cannot show the portrait at a gallery because he became too invested in the portrait’s subject. Despite his discomfort about this, the portrait is widely considered to be his life’s masterpiece.

Additionally, Sibyl releases her inhibitions and commits to a life of love when she gets engaged to Dorian. She then loses her ability to act. This all raises the question as to whether or not art really can just be art for the sake of enhancing the beauty of life. Is this the case, or does art automatically lend itself to something more? The novel as a whole carries an intense moral message itself.

Theme of Youth and Beauty

Lord Henry recognizes that there is something special in this and immediately decides to influence the young and impressionable Dorian because he knows that Dorian will be able to win over anybody that he wants to. Time and time again throughout the novel, beauty is treated as something that can revitalize and inspire so it is no wonder that Dorian becomes terrified of the fact that he will lose this power when he begins to age. Essentially, what Dorian gives up in order to maintain his influence over others is his soul.

The Superficiality of Society

Overall, Dorian finds it to be easier to abandon his morals to act out of his own selfish will because nobody in his sphere of social influence holds him accountable except for Basil, who tries but ultimately dies as a result of confronting Dorian. In fact, when Dorian tells Lord Henry that he killed Basil, Lord Henry just laughs it off saying that Dorian is not nearly brutal or aggressive enough to have committed a murder.

The Dangers of Social Influence

The Perils and Consequences of Social Influence – The social company that Dorian begins to keep includes people who share his personal philosophy that life has no meaning if it is not pleasurable and beautiful. In addition to these people, it is implied that Dorian also keeps company with impressionable young men and influences them in much the same way Lord Henry did when Dorian was younger.

It is no surprise that Dorian fell into this way of life when society was telling him over and over how lovely he looked but that he would one day lose it. When Dorian finds a way to keep himself from aging, he becomes devoid of any conscious or moral compass, but his face keeps him in the good favor of society because he appears innocent and pure in his features.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

By oscar wilde, the picture of dorian gray themes, art as a mirror.

This theme is exemplified by the titular portrait. Dorian Gray 's image reflects his conscience and his true self, and serves as a mirror of his soul. This fact echoes Wilde's statement (found in the preface) that "It is the spectator...that art really mirrors." However, this theme first appears earlier in the preface, with Wilde's contention that "the nineteenth-century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass." Realism is a genre of artistic expression that is said to have shown the 19th century its own reflection. The fear that Dorian expresses when viewing the painting, and the emotions that he seeks to escape through sin, drug addiction, and even murder, might be considered an expression of his rage at laying eyes upon his true self. The idea of reflectivity also recalls a major mythical influence on the novel: the story of Narcissus. Dorian, like Narcissus, falls in love with his own image, and is ultimately destroyed by it.

The Art of Living (or Living through Art)

This theme is expressed most prominently in the character of Lord Henry, and in the "new hedonism" he espouses. Lord Henry openly approaches life as an art form, seeking to sculpt Dorian's personality, and treating even his most casual speeches as dramatic performances. Most notably, he pursues new sensations and impressions of beauty with the amorality of an artist: as Wilde writes in the preface, "No artist has ethical sympathies." This latter characteristic is the one that leaves the deepest impression on Dorian's character. However, although both men fancy themselves artists at living, their flaw lies in their blatant violation of the rule given in the first line of the preface: "To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim." Dorian and Lord Henry both strive to reveal themselves in their "art."

Wilde also explores this theme by blurring the line between life and art. Characters in the novel include actresses who live as though they are constantly on stage, and a painter who values a friendship predominantly because the relationship improves his ability to paint. Dorian himself consciously bases his life and actions on a work of art: a book given to him by Lord Henry.

Vanity as Original Sin

Dorian's physical beauty is his most cherished attribute, and vanity is, as a consequence, his most crippling vice. Once a sense of the preciousness of his own beauty has been instilled in him by Lord Henry, all of Dorian's actions, from his wish for undying youth at the beginning of the novel to his desperate attempt to destroy the portrait at the end, are motivated by vanity. Even his attempts at altruism are driven by a desire to improve the appearance of his soul. Throughout the novel, vanity haunts Dorian, seeming to damn his actions before he even commits them; vanity is his original sin. Dorian's fall from grace, then, is the consequence of his decision to embrace vanity - and indeed, all new and pleasurable feelings - as a virtue, at the behest of Lord Henry, his corrupter. In the preface to the novel, Wilde invites us to ponder the inescapability of vanity in our own relationship to art when he states that "it is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors." If we see ourselves in art, and find art to be beautiful, then it follows that we, like Dorian, are in fact admiring our own beauty.

The Duplicity of One's Public and Private Selves

This theme is prominent in much of Wilde's work. It plays a central role in The Importace of Being Earnest , and is prominent throughout this novel, as well. In addition to the protagonist, many of the novel's characters are greatly concerned with their reputations. Lord Henry and Basil Hallward both counsel Dorian on how to best preserve his good status in the public eye. When crimes are committed, it is not personal absolution that anyone is concerned with, but whether or not the guilty party will be held responsible by the public. In this way, each character in the novel possesses an awareness of a split identity: one that is defined by the public, and one that they define themselves. The figure of Dorian is an allegorical representation of this condition. The portrait is a literal visualization of Dorian's private self, the state of his soul, while Dorian himself looks perpetually young, beautiful, and innocent.

Much of Wilde's social commentary in the novel springs from his manipulation of this theme. People's responses to Dorian constantly highlight the overwhelming superficiality of Victorian London (if not people in general). Because Dorian always looks innocent, most of the people he encounters assume that he is a good, kind person. Dorian literally gets away with murder because people are automatically more willing to believe their eyes than anything else.

The Value of Beauty and Youth

Lord Henry claims to value beauty and youth above all else. It is this belief, when imparted to Dorian, that drives the protagonist to make the wish that ultimately damns him. When Dorian realizes that he will keep his youthful appearance regardless of whatever immoral actions he indulges in, he considers himself free of the moral constraints faced by ordinary men. He values his physical appearance more than the state of his soul, which is openly displayed by the ever-increasing degradation of the portrait. This superficial faith in the ultimate value of youth and beauty is therefore the driving mechanism behind the protagonist's damnation. In this way, The Picture of Dorian Gray may be read as a moralistic tale warning against the dangers of valuing one's appearance too highly, and of neglecting one's conscience.

It is important to bear in mind that the beauty that Dorian incessantly pursues is a beauty defined by a purely artistic sensibility, as opposed to a humanitarian one. When faced with the news of his fiance's suicide, Dorian views the event as satisfyingly melodramatic. His obsession with aesthetic beauty prevents Dorian from attending to the pangs of his own conscience.

Influence and Corruption

Dorian begins the novel as an innocent youth. Under Lord Henry's influence he becomes corrupt, and eventually begins corrupting other youths himself. One of the major philosophical questions raised by this novel is that of where to locate the responsibility for a person's misdeeds. If one engages in a moralistic reading, The Picture of Dorian Gray can be seen as a lesson in taking responsibility for one's actions. Dorian often points to Lord Henry as the source of his corruption. However, when contemplating the plights of others, Dorian lays the blame at their own feet rather than considering the role that he might have played in their downfall.

Homosexuality

This is the theme that Wilde was alluding to when he wrote of the "note of Doom that like a purple thread runs through the cold cloth of Dorian Gray " in a letter to his young lover, Bosie, following his ruinous court appearances. He calls the theme of homosexuality a "note of doom" because sodomy and homosexuality in general were severly punishable offenses in Victorian England, and it was under such charges that Wilde was brought to trial.

In the novel, there are strong homosexual undertones in the relationships between the three central characters (Dorian, Lord Henry, and Basil Hallward), as well as between Dorian and several of the young men whose lives he is said to have "ruined", most notably Alan Campbell . In his revision of the novel for its official release, after it appeared in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine , Wilde removed all of the most blatant references to homosexuality. However, the idea of sexual affection between men proved too integral to the characters and their interactions to be entirely expunged from the novel. This theme has prompted many critics to read the novel as the story of a man's struggle with his socially unacceptable proclivities. Indeed, some feel that Wilde was working out his own conflicted feelings on the subject through the novel.

The Picture of Dorian Gray Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Picture of Dorian Gray is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Why is James worried about his sister's suitor?

James is very jealous, protective of his sister, and suspicious of the situation, since Sibyl doesn't even seem to know her suitor's name.

picture of dorian gray

I think that Basil knows what Henry is capable. He doesn't want Henry's influence to turn Dorian from good to evil.

List all the sensory experiences mentioned in the first two paragraphs.

From the text:

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...

Study Guide for The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray study guide contains a biography of Oscar Wilde, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The Picture of Dorian Gray
• The Picture of Dorian Gray Summary
• The Picture of Dorian Gray Video
• Character List

Essays for The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

• Morality and Immorality (The Picture of Dorian Gray and A Streetcar Named Desire)
• The Life of Secrecy
• Break On Through To the Other Side
• The Art of Immorality: Character Fate and Morality in Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray
• The Unconscious Image of the Conscious Mind

Lesson Plan for The Picture of Dorian Gray

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to The Picture of Dorian Gray
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• The Picture of Dorian Gray Bibliography

E-Text of The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray e-text contains the full text of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

• Chapters 1-4
• Chapters 5-8
• Chapters 9-12
• Chapters 13-16

Wikipedia Entries for The Picture of Dorian Gray

• Introduction
• Publication and versions

A Summary and Analysis of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The Picture of Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde’s one novel, published originally in 1890 (as a serial) and then in book form the following year. The novel is at once an example of late Victorian Gothic horror and , in some ways, the greatest English-language novel about decadence and aestheticism, or ‘art for art’s sake’.

To show how these themes and movements find their way into the novel, it’s necessary to offer some words of analysis. But before we analyse The Picture of Dorian Gray , it might be worth summarising the plot of the novel.

The Picture of Dorian Gray : summary

The three main characters in The Picture of Dorian Gray are the title character (a beautiful young man), Basil Hallward (a painter), and Lord Henry Wotton (Basil Hallward’s friend).

The novel opens with Basil painting Dorian Gray’s portrait. Lord Henry Wotton takes a shine to the young man, and advises him to be constantly in search of new ‘sensations’ in life. He encourages Dorian to drink deep of life’s pleasures.

When the picture of Dorian is finished, Dorian marvels at how young and beautiful he looks, before wishing that he could always remain as young and attractive while his portrait is the one that ages and decays, rather than the other way around. When he proclaims that he would give his soul to have such a wish granted, it’s as if he has made a pact with the devil.

Basil’s finished portrait is sent to Dorian’s house, while Dorian himself goes out and follows Lord Henry’s advice. He falls head over heels in love with an actress, Sibyl Vane, but when she loses her ability to act well – because, she claims, now she has fallen in love for real she cannot imitate it on the stage – Dorian cruelly discards her. He had fallen in love with her art as an actress, and now she has lost that, she is meaningless to him.

Sibyl takes her own life before Dorian – who has observed a change in his portrait, which looks to have a slightly meaner expression than before – can apologise to her and beg her forgiveness. But Lord Henry consoles Dorian, arguing that Sibyl, in dying young, has given her last beautiful performance.

Dorian, shocked by the change in the portrait, locks it away at the top of his house, in his old schoolroom. Inspired by an immoral ‘yellow book’ which Lord Henry gives to him, Dorian continues to experience all manner of ‘sensations’, no matter how immoral they are. When he next takes a look at the portrait in his attic, he finds an old and evil face, disfigured by sin, staring out at him.

The novel moves forward some thirteen years. Dorian, of course, is still young and fresh-faced, but his portrait looks meaner and older than ever. When Dorian shows the portrait to Basil, who painted it, the artist – who had worshipped Dorian’s beauty when he painted the picture – is shocked and appalled. Dorian stabs Basil to death, before enlisting the help of someone to dispose of the body (this man, horrified by what he has done, will later take his own life).

Dorian slides further into sin and evil, until one day, the brother of the dead actress, Sibyl Vane, bumps into Dorian Gray and intends to exact revenge for his sister’s mistreatment at the hands of Dorian. But when he follows Dorian to the latter’s country estate, he is accidentally shot by one of Dorian’s shooting party.

Dorian becomes intent on reforming his character, hoping that the portrait will start to improve if he behaves better. But when he goes up to look at the painting, he finds that it shows the face of a hypocrite, because even his abstinence from vice was, in its own way, a quest for a new sensation to experience.

Horrified and angered, Dorian plunges a knife into the canvas, but when the servants walk in on him, they find the portrait as it was originally painted, showing Dorian Gray as a youthful man. Meanwhile, on the floor, there is the body of a wrinkled old man with a ‘loathsome’ face.

The Picture of Dorian Gray : analysis

The Picture of Dorian Gray has been analysed as an example of the Gothic horror novel, as a variation on the theme of the ‘double’, and as a narrative embodying some of the key aspects of late nineteenth-century aestheticism and decadence.

Wilde’s skill lies in how he manages to weave these various elements together, creating a modern take on the old Faust story (the German figure Faust sold his soul to the devil, via Mephistopheles) which also, in its depictions of late Victorian sin and vice, may remind readers of another work of fiction published just four years earlier: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (which we’ve analysed here ).

Indeed, the discovery of the body of Dorian Gray as a wrinkled and horrifically ugly corpse at the end of the novel recalls the discovery of Jekyll/Hyde in Stevenson’s novella.

To find the novel’s value as a book of the aesthetic movement, we need look no further than Wilde’s preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray , in which he states, for instance, that ‘there is no such thing as a moral or immoral book’ (what matters is whether the book is written well or not) and ‘all art is quite useless’ (art shouldn’t change the world: art exists as, and for, itself, and no more).

Lord Henry Wotton is very much the voice of the aesthetic movement in the novel, and many of his pronouncements echo those made by the prominent art critic (under whom Wilde had studied at Oxford), Walter Pater. But whereas Pater talked of ‘new impressions’, Lord Henry (or Wilde, in his novel) took this up a notch, calling for new ‘sensations’.

We tend to speak conveniently of ‘periods’ or ‘movements’ or ‘eras’ in literary history, but these labels aren’t always useful. Both Oscar Wilde and Elizabeth Gaskell, the author of Mary Barton and North and South , were ‘Victorian’ in that they were both writing and publishing their work in Britain during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901).

But whereas Gaskell, writing in the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s, wrote ‘realist’ novels about the plight of factory workers in northern England, Wilde wrote a fantastical horror story about upper-class men who are able to stay forever young and spotless while their portraits decay in their attic. They’re a world away from each other.

Wilde’s novel is a good example of how later Victorian fiction often turned against the values and approaches favourited by earlier Victorian writers. It was Wilde who, famously, said of the sad ending of Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop , which Dickens’s original readers in the 1840s wept buckets over, ‘one must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without’ – what, crying?

No. Wilde’s word was ‘laughing’. The overly sentimental style favoured by mid-century novelists like Dickens had given way to a more casual, poised, nonchalant, and detached mode of storytelling.

At the same time, we can overstate the extent to which Wilde’s novel turns its back on earlier Victorian attitudes and values. Despite his statement that there is no such thing as a moral or immoral book, The Picture of Dorian Gray is a highly moral work, as the tale of Faust was. Dorian’s life is destroyed by his commitment to a life of pleasure, even though it entails the destruction of other lives – most notably, Sibyl Vane’s.

Far from being a book that would be denounced from the pulpits by Anglican clergymen for being ‘immoral’, The Picture of Dorian Gray could make for a pretty good moral sermon in itself, albeit one that’s more witty and entertaining than most Christian sermons.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is, at bottom, a novel of surfaces and appearance. We say ‘at bottom’, but that is precisely the point: the novel is, as many critics have commented, all surface. Lord Henry is so taken by the beauty of Dorian Gray that he sets about being a bad influence on him.

Dorian is so taken by the painting of him – a two-dimensional representation of his outward appearance – that he makes his deal with the devil, trading his soul, that thing which represents inner meaning and inner depth, in exchange for remaining youthful on the outside.

Then, when Dorian falls in love, it’s with an actress, not because he loves her but because he loves her performance. When she loses her ability to act, he abandons her. Her name, Sibyl Vane, points up the vanity of acting and the pursuit of skin-deep appearance at the cost if something more substantial, but her first name also acts as a warning: in Greek mythology, the Sibyls made cryptic statements about future events.

But there’s probably a particular Sibyl that Wilde had in mind: the Sibyl at Cumae, who, in Petronius’ scurrilous Roman novel Satyricon (which Wilde would surely have known) and in other stories, was destined to live forever but to age and wither away. She had eternal life, but not eternal youth. Dorian’s own eternal youth comes at a horrible cost: without a soul, all he can do is go in pursuit of new sensations, forever chasing desire yet never attaining true fulfilment.

It will, in the end, destroy him: in lashing out and trying to destroy the truth that stares back at him from his portrait, much as he had destroyed the artist who held up a mirror to his corrupt self, Dorian Gray destroys himself. In the last analysis, as he and his portrait do not exist separately from each other, he must live with himself – and with his conscience – or must die in his vain attempt to close his eyes to who he has really become.

About Oscar Wilde

The life of the Irish novelist, poet, essayist, and playwright Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) is as famous as – perhaps even more famous than – his work. But in a career spanning some twenty years, Wilde created a body of work which continues to be read an enjoyed by people around the world: a novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray ; short stories and fairy tales such as ‘ The Happy Prince ’ and ‘ The Selfish Giant ’; poems including The Ballad of Reading Gaol ; and essay-dialogues which were witty revivals of the Platonic philosophical dialogue.

But above all, it is Wilde’s plays that he continues to be known for, and these include witty drawing-room comedies such as Lady Windermere’s Fan , A Woman of No Importance , and The Importance of Being Earnest , as well as a Biblical drama, Salome (which was banned from performance in the UK and had to be staged abroad). Wilde is also often remembered for his witty quips and paradoxes and his conversational one-liners, which are legion.

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5 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray”

‘Genius lasts longer than beauty’ – a very appropriate quote from Chapter 1

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The “yellow book”, referred to is probably Huysmans’s A Rebours, which was sold in a yellow jacket. It is not the Yellow Book quarterly (a publication featuring poetry, prose and illustrations from followers of the Aesthetic movement), which came later, and which probably took its title from the reference in Wilde’s novel.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — The Picture of Dorian Gray — A Theme Of Beauty And Appearance In The Picture Of Dorian Gray

A Theme of Beauty and Appearance in The Picture of Dorian Gray

• Categories: Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray

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Words: 1031 |

Published: Dec 16, 2021

Words: 1031 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Works Cited

• Bristow, J. (2016). Oscar Wilde and the art of dying. In S. Nash (Ed.), Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture (pp. 161-182). Palgrave Macmillan.
• Ellmann, R. (1988). Oscar Wilde. Vintage.
• Freeman, N. (2009). Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray. In B. K. Reynolds (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde (pp. 45-59). Cambridge University Press.
• Gillespie, M. (2011). Oscar Wilde and the creation of beauty. In M. T. Alkana & J. Bryant (Eds.), Oscar Wilde as a Character in Victorian Fiction (pp. 11-24). Palgrave Macmillan.
• Helford, E. R. (2016). Oscar Wilde: The importance of being Irish. Routledge.
• Lahr, J. (2018). The Picture of Dorian Gray: An annotated, uncensored edition. Harvard University Press.
• Lysaght, C. (2018). ‘The portrait and the artist’: Self-fashioning in The Picture of Dorian Gray. In M. K. Cornish, J. P. McCormack, & C. O'Sullivan (Eds.), Irish Literatures in Transition: A Companion (pp. 140-156). Cambridge University Press.
• Raby, P. (2012). The Cambridge companion to Oscar Wilde. Cambridge University Press.
• Raby, P. (2016). Wilde's "black novel": The picture of Dorian Gray. The Wildean, 48, 4-28.
• Wilde, O. (1890). The Picture of Dorian Gray. Ward, Lock, and Co.

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