Showing results by author "Oscar Wilde" in All Categories

In a late 19th century London studio, aspiring artist Basil Hallward puts the finishing touches on a portrait of his handsome young friend Dorian Gray. Dorian looks at the painting and wishes that the portrait might grow old while he remains forever young.

In the wealthy and vain hedonist Dorian Gray, London painter Basil Hallward has found his muse. Only when the portrait of Dorian begins to age, while the man himself remains untouched by time, do they realize they may have made a deal with the devil. Oscar Wilde’s only novel takes a witty, philosophical, and harrowing look at our obsession with youth and the price we pay for it.

"The ones who are able to see the high meaning of beauty are cultural people. However, the chosen one is the one who sees only one thing in beauty: the Beauty itself" said one of the most famous English poets, writers, playwrights, a bright and inimitable Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). Oscar Wilde is the author of not only the world famous novel Portrait of Dorian Gray, but also of beautiful fairy tales combining the rich imagination of the writer and the ironic style of narration. Every detail has a symbolic meaning and beauty, along with the good, acts as an inseparable whole.

If only I could remain young while the picture grows old. For that I’d give anything.... When Dorian Gray, a handsome young man about town, makes this wish, he can hardly guess that it will mark the beginning of a life of hedonism and debauchery. Soon enough his webs of deception and deceit catch innocent victims, some of them his closest friends, and the only evidence of his misdeeds is a long-forgotten portrait in his attic.

The Importance of Being Earnest is a play written by the renowned playwright and author, Oscar Wilde. It premiered in London on Valentines Day, 1895, and was an instant success. With The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde accomplished what he'd set out to do, which was to make light of the humorous behavior of British high society.

The Nightingale and the Rose is a short tragic fantasy story for children. It was first published in 1888 in the anthology The Happy Prince and Other Tales, which, in addition to its title story, also includes "The Happy Prince", "The Devoted Friend", "The Selfish Giant" and "The Remarkable Rocket". In The Nightingale and the Rose by Oscar Wilde we have theme of love, sacrifice, selflessness, pity, materialism and gratitude.

"The Happy Prince" is a short story by Oscar Wilde, about a swallow and a statue. The swallow who remained behind when his flock flew to Africa for the winter, befriends a golden and bejewelled statue of a prince. Witnessing the poverty and suffering in the city, the statue asks the swallow to take his jewels and use them to help the poor. One by the swallow takes the gemstones, and ultimately also the gold plating, stripping the statue bare. But because it waited so long, it succumbs to the cold of winter.

In this wickedly funny play, a seemingly ideal couple and their charming, privileged friends surmount such details as selling government secrets, theft, and bribery with love triumphant over all.

Collection The Best Fairy Tales contents. Brothers Grimm: Hansel and Gretel ; Little Red Cap ; Rumplestiltskin ; Rapunzel. Charles Perrault : Cinderella Or The Little Glass Slipper ; The Master Cat or Puss In Boots ; The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods. Hans Christian Andersen: The Ugly Duckling. Oscar Wilde: The Happy Prince ; The Nightingale and the Rose ; The Selfish Giant ; The Devoted Friend ; The Remarkable Rocket.

This selection of essays by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) demonstrate the varied power of his genius. Compiled from his lecture tours, newspaper articles, essays and epigrams, these writings show that beneath his trademark wit and love of paradox, Oscar Wilde was an original and remarkably modern writer.

Oscar Wilde brings his enormous gifts for astute social observation and sparkling prose to The Picture of Dorian Gray, the dreamlike story of a young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty. This dandy, who remains forever unchanged---petulant, hedonistic, vain, and amoral---while a painting of him ages and grows increasingly hideous with the years, has been horrifying and enchanting readers for more than 100 years.

A palmist’s prediction leads to murder; an enigmatic woman’s lifestyle is a mystery to be solved; a ghost tries to frighten the new tenants of his home; a man has discovered the dedicatee of Shakespeare’s Sonnets; a millionaire wants to be painted as a pauper. Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories is a collection of fascinating short stories which are subversive as well as entertaining.

Les grands textes du XIXe siècle. "L'expression était d'une cruauté atroce. Là, son âme même, émergeant de la toile, le dévisageait et l'appelait à son tribunal." Devant son portrait, œuvre d'un de ses amis, Dorian Gray, jeune homme d'une immense fortune et d'une exceptionnelle beauté, fait le vœu de rester tel qu'il est peint, tandis que son image vieillira à sa place. Exaucé par une intervention magique et fatale, Dorian cède alors à tous ses caprices et à toutes ses folies.

This novel is indeed a morality tale about the hazards of egotistical self-indulgence. Dorian Grey's pact with evil allows his portrait to take on his many sins and degradations while his physical appearance remains youthful. Over the years as he becomes cruel and vicious, even murderous, Dorian's young and perfect body is no longer enough to salvage his deteriorating mind and morality. Will justice and good prevail?

Colin Baker (Doctor Who) stars in this delightful adaptation of Oscar Wilde's classic tale of the ghost who has lost his knack at haunting. When a modern American family moves into an old English manor with a sinister history, they ignore the warnings and hauntings by the house's fearful, cantankerous, spectral inhabitant... Horror and hilarity will ensure in this timeless, family-friendly entertainment - featuring a full cast, sound effects, and an original musical score. 

A tender love story, a serpentine villainess, a glittering setting in London society, and a showering of Wildean witticism are only a few of the reasons why this play has enjoyed hugely successful revivals in London, in New York, and on the silver screen. This 1895 drama is eerily prescient, as it examines the plight of a promising politician, desperate to hide a secret in his past. With empathy and wit, Oscar Wilde explores the pitfalls of holding public figures to higher standards than the rest of us.

The Importance of Being Earnest is undoubtably Oscar Wilde's best known play probably due to its sharp wit that cannot help but enchant and entertain any reader, theatregoer or listener with this performance.

The American Otis family moves into the old English country house Canterville Chase. They are warned that the house is haunted before they move in but are unconcerned at first. They soon accept that the ghost is real but are not frightened by it. The ghost, who had been frightening all those who stayed at Canterville Chase for 300 years, takes the Americans' unwillingness to be scared by him as a great insult. He grows to despise them all, except for the teenage daughter, Virginia, who he feels is different from the rest of her family.

Oscar Wilde's enduring masterpiece, this fable of innocence and corruption, purity and decay has become a true classic. The beautiful, narcissistic Dorian Gray, torn between the influence of cynical hedonist Lord Henry Wotton and tortured artist Basil Hallward, sells the beauty of his soul in exchange for external perfection. Ultimately, he cannot escape the disfigurement of sin. Wilde's remarkable wit and memorable, epigrammatic lines dazzle in audiobook form!

"You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit." One day, the artist Basil Hallward is painting a picture of his muse Dorian Gray with his friend Lord Henry watching. Dorian listens as Lord Henry confidentially presents his hedonistic world view, saying beauty is the only thing in life that truly matters. It makes Dorian wish that his painting would age instead of him. Not long thereafter, Dorian sees his girl perform Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and is so turned off by her bad performance that he rejects her.