Books like The Picture of Dorian Gray
What should you read after Oscar Wilde’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Oscar Wilde
- 1890
- Gothic fiction
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after The Picture of Dorian Gray
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchDr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson
The same city, the same decade, the same idea: a respectable man who has arranged somewhere else to keep his appetites. Stevenson makes it a case file where Wilde makes it a drawing room.
- Victorian London's double life
- A bargain never explained
- Short enough to read in a sitting
- Told as investigation, not seduction
Great matchFrankenstein
Mary Shelley
The other great novel about a man ruined by something he made and could not bear to look at. Wilde's canvas has a clear ancestor in Shelley's laboratory.
- A portrait that ages instead of you
- A bargain never explained
- Aestheticism pushed to its ruin
- Earlier, more ornate prose
Best for beauty as a moral problemThe Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
A gorgeous man assembled out of money and want, watched by a narrator half in love with him. Different century, identical diagnosis of glamour.
- Beauty treated as a moral problem
- Aestheticism pushed to its ruin
- Short enough to read in a sitting
- Jazz Age America, not Mayfair
Great matchWuthering Heights
Emily Bronte
If you read Dorian for the spectacle of a person destroying everyone within reach and being magnetic about it, Heathcliff is the earlier and angrier model.
- A mentor who corrupts for sport
- Aestheticism pushed to its ruin
- No supernatural bargain
Best for aestheticism taken too farPerfume: The Story of a Murderer
Patrick Süskind
A man who pursues perfect beauty with no moral apparatus whatsoever, and the pursuit is written so seductively you keep going. Dorian's philosophy without Dorian's guilt.
- Aestheticism pushed to its ruin
- Beauty treated as a moral problem
- A bargain never explained
- Murders are described plainly
Great matchThe Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter
Theodora Goss
The Victorian gothic canon reassembled as an ensemble of women, Jekyll and Moreau among their fathers. Playful company for anyone who read Dorian for the period furniture.
- Victorian London's double life
- A portrait that ages instead of you
- Adventure tone, not decadence
Best for the charming monsterThe Talented Mr. Ripley
Patricia Highsmith
Tom Ripley is Dorian in a linen suit: beautiful manners, borrowed life, and a reader who keeps hoping he gets away with it. Deeply uncomfortable and impossible to put down.
- Beauty treated as a moral problem
- A mentor who corrupts for sport
- Victorian London's double life
- No supernatural element
Worth a look — with a warningThe Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern
For the aesthetic more than the argument: a book that cares about beauty above all and builds an entire world out of it. Wilde would have approved of the wardrobe, if not the plot.
- A bargain never explained
- Aestheticism pushed to its ruin
- Almost no moral bite
Worth a look — with a warningAmerican Psycho
Bret Easton Ellis
Dorian relocated to 1980s Manhattan, where the surfaces are business cards and the interior is nothing at all. The satire is sharp; the violence is genuinely extreme.
- Aestheticism pushed to its ruin
- Beauty treated as a moral problem
- Victorian London's double life
- Graphic, sustained violence
Great matchThe Immortalists
Chloe Benjamin
Four siblings learn the dates of their deaths and spend their lives deciding what that permits. The Dorian question — what would you do without consequence — answered four ways.
- A bargain never explained
- Beauty treated as a moral problem
- Contemporary realism, no magic
Best for the corrupting mentorThe Secret History
Donna Tartt
A beautiful older man teaches clever young people that ordinary morality is beneath them, and everything follows from that. Lord Henry with a classics department.
- A mentor who corrupts for sport
- Aestheticism pushed to its ruin
- Beauty treated as a moral problem
- 560 pages, deliberate pace
What should you read after The Picture of Dorian Gray?
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson — the same city, the same decade, the same idea: a respectable man who has arranged somewhere else to keep his appetites. Stevenson makes it a case file where Wilde makes it a drawing room.
If what stayed with you was a portrait that ages instead of you, read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley instead: the other great novel about a man ruined by something he made and could not bear to look at. Wilde's canvas has a clear ancestor in Shelley's laboratory. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is the other strong option — a gorgeous man assembled out of money and want, watched by a narrator half in love with him. Different century, identical diagnosis of glamour.
Common questions
- What should you read after The Picture of Dorian Gray?
- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald are the closest matches. Which fits best depends on what you loved about The Picture of Dorian Gray: a portrait that ages instead of you, epigrams on every page, a mentor who corrupts for sport, beauty treated as a moral problem.
- What is the best book like The Picture of Dorian Gray?
- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson is the strongest overall match. The same city, the same decade, the same idea: a respectable man who has arranged somewhere else to keep his appetites. Stevenson makes it a case file where Wilde makes it a drawing room.
- What are books similar to The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde?
- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind, The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter by Theodora Goss, The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin, The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Each one matches a different part of The Picture of Dorian Gray rather than just its genre.
- Is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde worth reading after The Picture of Dorian Gray?
- Yes — readers who loved The Picture of Dorian Gray tend to land well with it: a hidden second self; fog-bound London respectability; under 100 pages. One thing to know going in: told as investigation, not seduction.
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