The Picture of Dorian Gray (Restyled)

Late nineteenth-century London: a city of contrasts. Great wealth and terrible poverty, beauty and ugliness, purity and immorality. Oscar Wilde takes the reader into this strange and fascinating world through the strange story of the picture of Dorian Gray. Young, handsome and innocent, the aristocratic Dorian is visiting his friend, the kind and gentle painter Basil Hallward, when he meets Lord Henry Wotton. Entertaining and cynical, Lord Henry introduces Dorian to the idea of a world where the only value is beauty, and everything must serve this ideal. But how can Dorian survive ageing and ugliness? In front of his beautiful portrait, painted by Hallward, Dorian makes a terrible wish. This wish will come true, dragging Dorian into a world of the senses, of beauty and joy, but also of terror, of fear and ultimately of murder…

Syllabus:

• Present Simple + Passive, Present Continuous, Past Simple + Passive, Past Continuous, Present Perfect, Verb + ing, Ask someone to + inf, Make someone + base form of verb, To look + adj, To look like + noun, To be like + noun, Imperatives (+ negative), Can for ability and permission, Could for requests and ability, Must for obligation and logical deduction Will for future prediction mand decisions made at time of speaking, 0 conditional, 1 conditional;
• There is/are (+ past forms);
• Adjectives + comparatives + superlatives;
• Adverbs.

In this Reader you will find:

• Information about Oscar Wilde’s life;
• Sections focusing on background and context;
• Glossary of difficult words;
• Comprehension activities;
• PET-style activities;
• Exit test.

Level: Intermediate B1

1000 Headwords

Retold and activities by Jane Bowie