LARGE PAPER EDITION SIGNED BY WILDE
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Ward Lock, 1891.
First edition, large paper issue, number 199 of 250 copies, signed by the author. Original parchment spine with grey paper covered boards with gilt titles and vignette to spine and upper cover. Top edge gilt, others uncut. A very good copy indeed that has splits to front and rear joints at the base of the spine and minor wear to the spine ends, but is a generally clean and bright and by the standards of this fragile book, unusually well preserved. Housed in a custom made clamshell cloth box.
Wilde's only novel, and longest work of prose, was written as a result of a commission in 1889 from J. M Stoddart, the managing editor of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, and first published in his magazine in 1890. Critical reaction was generally unfavourable, with comments of depravity, corruption and that the book was suitable only for "perverted telegraph boys".
Wilde made various alterations to the first edition and added a preface attempting through a series of epigrams to justify the book's literary merit.
Running through the book are the themes of the gothic novel, perhaps owing something to Wilde's great uncle Charles Maturin and his gothic masterpiece, Melmoth, in its psychological manipulation of the subjects. Underlying the plot is the theme of duality encapsulated by Dorian's unchanging public face and deterioration of his hidden portrait, but also the relationship between ethics and aesthetics and how the pursuit of pleasure leads to increasing desensitisation to evil.
"The Picture of Dorian Gray is a vindication of the power of literature... a unique form of fiction that fuses gothic, decadent, and melodramatic modes of writing to produce a haunting story that has entered the mythic imagination of subsequent generations." (Anne Markey).
Stock ID: 23167
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