The Picture of Dorian Gray (Modern Library Classics)

Introduction by Jeffrey Eugenides

Written in his distinctively dazzling manner, Oscar Wildes story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is the authors most popular work. The tale of Dorian Grays moral disintegration caused a scandal when it rst appeared in 1890, but though Wilde was attacked for the novels corrupting inuence, he responded that there is, in fact, a terrible moral in Dorian Gray. Just a few years later, the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wildes homosexual liaisons, which resulted in his imprisonment. Of Dorian Grays relationship to autobiography, Wilde noted in a letter, Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to bein other ages, perhaps.