Oscar Wilde, Art and Morality: A Defence of ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, edited by Stuart Mason, gathers the press controversy that greeted Wilde’s only novel. It reprints the hostile reviews that charged the book with immorality together with Wilde’s witty, combative replies, in which he defended the autonomy of art against moralizing critics.
The volume is a fascinating dossier of a literary scandal and a key document of late-Victorian debates over the relation of art and morality. It illuminates Wilde’s aesthetic creed in his own defiant words. This free EPUB download is cleanly formatted for any e-reader.