The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a novel by the Irish writer Oscar Wilde, published in 1890. A shorter version appeared that year in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, and Wilde expanded it into the book-length edition that followed in 1891.

In Victorian London, the artist Basil Hallward paints a portrait of Dorian Gray, a beautiful and wealthy young man who is both his friend and his muse. Through Basil, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, whose doctrine is that beauty and sensual pleasure are the only things worth pursuing.

Stirred by Lord Henry's talk about youth and its brevity, Dorian wishes aloud that the portrait might grow old in his place. The wish takes effect: his face keeps its youth and beauty while the painting carries every change and every wrong he commits, and his own public reputation stays untouched.

Dorian hides the picture away, does as he pleases and stays outwardly untouched, and the novel becomes a study of a man and of the record he is keeping of himself. It is Wilde's only novel, and passages from it were used against him at his trials.