Oscar Wilde 2: If Looks Could Kill: The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde’s only novel, and it caused a sensation. It was used as evidence in Wilde’s trial for the crime of “gross indecency” in 1895. The conceit of the story is famous – a portrait grows old and corrupt while its human subject remains eternally youthful. But who knows what really happens in this famous modern myth?

Sophie and Jonty talk about the influence of Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Jonty throws around some exciting legal phrases like the Criminal Law Amendment Act. There’s plenty of discussion of Wilde’s personal obsession with home interiors, as well as a debate about why Wilde is so indebted to Dickens when he’s always going on about his contempt for matters of morality. Find out how a novel that is quintessentially about London is also about Wilde’s Irish identity, and what kind of wallpaper Oscar Wilde had in his student digs at Oxford. As the arch-aphorist and aesthetic rogue Henry Wotton would say, this podcast episode “has all the surprise of candour,” so find out what really happens in this legendary modern myth.

Books referenced or mentioned in this episode:

Oscar Wilde: A LIfe (2021) by Matthew Sturgis

Sodomy on the Thames: Sex, Love and Scandal in Wilde Times (2012) by Morris B Kaplan

Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888)

Oscar Wilde, “The Decay of Lying,” “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” and “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.” (1889)

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (1838)

Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864); Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870); Around the World in Eighty Days (1872)

Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)

Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)

H.G. Wells The Time Machine (1895) War of the Worlds (1898)

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