The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings

by Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde is easy to read and quite entertaining. This collection starts with The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is a fairly short novel. It's quite good, although rambling at times. I've only ever read Wilde's plays before, so it was strange to read his signature silly dialogue in a mostly serious novel. It was good, and worth the short read. This collection also included several of Wilde's plays: Landy Windermere's Fan, which was okay; An Ideal Husband, which is decent, and The Importance of Being Ernest, which is deliciously funny. My only problem about that last one is that I have seen the film adaptation, and I cannot imagine the characters of Jack, Agly, and Lady Bracknell as anyone but Colin Firth, Rupert Everett, and Judi Dench (respectively). The collection wraps up with the narrative poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," which he wrote in prison towards the end of his short but flamboyant life. It's a good assortment of his work; I highly recommend this collection to anyone wanting to get to know Oscar Wilde better.

This book also gets bonus points for using the famous photograph of Wilde taken by Napoleon Sarony, which was the subject of a very famous copyright lawsuit that established that photographs could be copyrighted.