Dorian Gray

This collection of new essays devoted to Oscar Wilde’s classic novel presents new critical work by prominent scholars that deal with numerous aspects of the famed novel. Essays range from early literary influences on the novel and its controversial early reception to its afterlife in literature, film, dance, photography, theatre, and television.

In addition to considering Dorian Gray as an iconic queer work of fiction that daringly challenged late-Victorian literary practices, the volume explores Wilde’s novel in terms of the history of the European novel and the book’s innovations as a gothic, supernatural work that defied the conventions of nineteenth-century realism. Along with striking illustrations of the novel since its publication --including images from popular adaptations-- the volume includes never-before translated early reviews of the novel in the European press along with an unpublished parody of Wilde’s novel in the form of an ＂examination paper＂ by the English writer Max Beerbohm. Edited by Richard Kaye, this volume offers multiple and fascinating perspectives on Oscar Wilde’s classic in fourteen highly readable essays.

Richard A. Kayeis Professor of English at Hunter College and in the Ph.D. Program in English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the editor of The D. H. Lawrence Review, the fifty-year old scholarly journal devoted to the British writer.