About The Picture of Dorian Gray

By Oscar Wilde · first published in 1890 · Literary Fiction

The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only novel Oscar Wilde wrote. It first appeared in a magazine in 1890, where reviewers called it unclean and poisonous, and Wilde revised and lengthened it for the book edition a year later. Four years after that, passages from it were read out in court as evidence against him.

The idea is simple enough to state in a sentence. Dorian Gray, young, rich and extraordinarily handsome, sits for a portrait and wishes that the painting could age while he stays as he is. Under the influence of the witty and cynical Lord Henry Wotton he sets out to try every pleasure London offers. His face stays innocent. The portrait, locked in an attic, records each cruelty.

Wilde gives Lord Henry most of the famous lines, and the book can be read for its epigrams alone. But underneath the wit it is a moral tale, and a darker one than its author’s reputation suggests, about what happens to someone who treats his own life as a work of art and other people as material. This preview covers the opening scene in Basil Hallward’s studio, where the painter admits why he will never exhibit his best picture.