The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray is Wilde's only novel, and it opens like a comedy of conversation, in a London studio on a summer afternoon. A painter has just made the best portrait of his life, his friend Lord Henry Wotton cannot stop talking, and the young man in the picture listens to every word. Then he makes a wish. What follows is a Gothic tale told in epigrams, about beauty, influence and what a face can hide. This is the 1891 book, the Preface and twenty chapters, one a day from the date the story first appeared in print.

Read one big book alongside other readers, a day at a time. Cohorts set off on the date above.