The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray

By: Oscar Wilde, Nicholas Frankel - editor

Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini

Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

Over 120 years after Oscar Wilde submitted The Picture of Dorian Gray for publication, the uncensored version of his novel appears here for the first time in audio. This volume restores material, including instances of graphic homosexual content, removed by the novel's first editor, who feared it would be "offensive" to Victorians.

©1962, 2000, 2011 The Estate of Oscar Wilde; Additional content copyright 2011 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College (P)2021 Tantor

A classic restored

Dorian's wish to remain as young as his portrait becomes a curse.
The artist's love for Dorian is what was primarily edited out--shamefully as it's essential to the plot. Some fine prose has been restored.

A Great Book by a Great Artist

One of my favorite written books and now a favorite Audible Book. Definitely ranks in my top ten of literature. A book that everyone should read and now listen to with great moral appreciation and a lesson to be learned about knowledge of one’s self and the healing power of conscience if heeded and the demise of the Soul and Human Heart if ignored.

Enjoyable and Thought Provoking

Wilde has such an incredible gift for delivering deep, provocative perspectives of life while simultaneously maintaining an engrossing story. The wit he gives Lord Henry balances such lofty opinions, preventing him from being read as a dull pretentious character.

The narrator was phenomenal and I assume he is some kind of actor. Each character has a different voice making it a much more lively read (I read the book whilst listening). His pronunciations of the decent amount of French terms and excerpts used was flawless. There were only some moments where I read the line with a slightly different emotion or tone than that used by the narrator but that’s just the subjectivity of dialogue in novels.

Missing chapters

Unable to follow with the book, missing a lot of information that the book covered but not the audio.

A wonderful book and performance

This is a wonderful book and performance. It is more a piece for our time than when it was published. The introductory matter does an excellent job of providing context for why the book was altered before publication.

Having it in the Plus catalog has allowed it to become on the top of my list of books to listen to.

Unfortunate narration

American narrator unsuitable. Inconsistent articulation of accents which was annoying and distracted from the beauty of the story. Pronunciation of 'Dorian' and words such as 'often' and 'coffee', amongst many others, was problematic. Please use British narrators for these classics.

Revealing alterations

I'd not read Wilde's classic until now. I was surprised how unscandalous it was to my ears: nothing overt described.

The back story

Some suggested skipping the history. The commentary helped me beter understand Wilde and the story.

badly organized

skip the first ~2 hours. for some reason they included a ton of detail before the story that could have been summarized into a few sentences and then said to listen to the appendix. and I lost interest about 2 hours from the end. there were tons of lists of things and it got really boring. I skipped forward and things got marginally better

all in all it was a good read, classic story, most of the narration was excellent. but some of it was really dull as well.

A Classic, But Not Here

No question that The Picture Of Dorian Gray is a classic, but this rendition, along with a lengthy telling of the editing ad nauseum, is really dull. After the first telling of the manuscript edits and the culture of the times and Oscar Wilde's persecution, then the second and the third and the fourth, I was ready for the actual book, already.
Then the book. A really wonderful story, but so stilted with the Victorian attitude and so overly Victorian flowery language and so much telling, not showing, that I really lost interest. A large part was descriptions of jewels and clothing and furniture and objects that began to sound like a seminar on Victorian objects. So Dorian's descent into decadent madness lost its affect.
And the characters were not clearly defined at all and I lost track of who was talking and who they were.
I realize this was written at a time when it was scandalous to even suggest homosexuality, but that attitude is so long gone, that it makes this book not relevant unless continually reminded of the times.
I think I will watch one of the movies instead.