> Skip to content
  • Published: 5 January 2021
  • ISBN: 9780241463307
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 80
  • RRP: $22.99

Penguin Readers Level 3: The Picture of Dorian Gray (ELT Graded Reader)



Penguin Readers is a graded reading series for English Language Teaching (ELT) markets, designed for teenagers and young adults learning English as a foreign or second language.

With carefully adapted text, new illustrations, language practise activities and additional online resources, the Penguin Readers series introduces language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, a Level 3 Reader, is A2 in the CEFR framework. The text is made up of sentences with up to three clauses, introducing first conditional, past continuous and present perfect simple for general experience. It is well supported by illustrations, which appear on most pages.
An artist paints a beautiful young man called Dorian Gray. When Dorian sees the picture, he decides to give his soul to keep his beautiful face. He lives a bad life and he is bad to many people, but his face never changes. However, in a room upstairs, the portrait gets uglier and uglier.

  • Published: 5 January 2021
  • ISBN: 9780241463307
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 80
  • RRP: $22.99

About the author

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin on 16 October 1854. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin and Magdalen College, Oxford. He then lived in London and married Constance Lloyd in 1884. Wilde was a leader of the Aesthetic Movement. He became famous because of the immense success of his plays such as Lady Windemere's Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was first published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1890 but was revised in 1891 after moralistic negative reviews.

After a public scandal involving Wilde's relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, he was sentenced to two years' hard labour in Reading Gaol for 'gross indecency'. His poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol was published anonymously in 1898. Wilde never lived in England again and died at the age of forty-six in Paris on 30 November 1900. He is buried in Père Lachaise cemetery where admirers often leave the lipstick marks of kisses on his tomb.

Also by Oscar Wilde

See all