He was emprisoned at Reading, a town some 30 miles west of London. At first he wasn't even allowed paper and pen to write. During his time in prison, Wilde wrote a 30,000 word letter to Douglas, which he handed to Ross, who sent a copy to Douglas. It was published in 1905 (long after Wilde's death) with the title De Profundis. In 1949 his son Vyvyan Holland published it again, including formerly left out parts.

The dramatic and literary ability shown in these plays, all of which were published later in book form, was as undisputed as their action and ideas were characteristically paradoxical. In 1893 the publisher refused to allow Wilde's Salomé to be produced, but it was produced in Paris by Sarah Bernhardt in 1894. This play formed the basis for one of Richard Strauss' early operas (Salome, 1905).

Maggi Hambling's statue, "A conversation with Oscar Wilde", installed in Adelaide Street, near Trafalgar Square, London, in 1998.

Wilde has variously been considered bisexual or homosexual, depending on how the terms are defined. His inclination towards relations with other men was relatively well known, the first such relation

The manuscripts of A Florentine Tragedy and an essay on Shakespeare's sonnets were stolen from his house in 1895. In 1904 a five-act tragedy, The Duchess of Padua, written by Wilde about 1883 for Mary Anderson, but not acted by her, was published in a German translation (Die Herzogin von Padua, translated by Max Meyerfeld) in Berlin.

Prison was unkind to Wilde's health and when he was released on May 19, 1897 he spent his last years penniless on the Continent, in self-inflicted exile from society and artistic circles. He went under the assumed name of 'Sebastian Melmoth', after the central character of the gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer. After his release, he wrote the famous poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol ("For he who lives more lives than one, more deaths than one must die").

On his deathbed he converted to the Roman Catholic Church, which he had long admired.

Wilde died of cerebral meningitis on November 30, 1900 in a Paris hotel. Different opinions are given on the cause of the meningitis; Richard Ellman claimed it was syphilitic; Merlin Holland thought this to be a misconception, noting that Wilde's meningitis followed a surgical intervention, perhaps a mastoidectomy; Wilde's physicians, Dr. Paul Cleiss and A'Court Tucker reported that the condition stemmed from an old suppuration of the right ear (une ancienne suppuration de l'oreille droite d'ailleurs en traitement depuis plusieurs années) and do not allude to syphilis.

Wilde was buried in the Cimetière de Bagneux outside Paris but was later moved to Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Contents

Preface. Chapter 1. Chapter 2. Chapter 3. Chapter 4. Chapter 5. Chapter 6. Chapter 7. Chapter 8. Chapter 9. Chapter 10. Chapter 11. Chapter 12. Chapter 13. Chapter 14. Chapter 15. Chapter 16. Chapter 17. Chapter 18. Chapter 19. Chapter 20.

Click on a number in the chapter list to go to the first page of that chapter.

Note:
The best way to read this ebook is in Full Screen mode: click View, Full Screen to set Adobe Acrobat to Full Screen View. This mode allows you to use Page Down to go to the next page, and affords the best reading view. Press Escape to exit the Full Screen View.

Oscar Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Grey. 1

The Picture of Dorian Grey.
Preface.

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.