The Picture of Dorian Gray

The painter Basil Hallward paints a portrait of Dorian Gray, a young man of extraordinary beauty, and his witty, cynical friend Lord Henry Wotton fills Dorian's head with the idea that youth and pleasure are all that matter. Looking at the picture, Dorian wishes that it might grow old instead of him. His wish is granted: he stays young and beautiful through years of cruelty and vice, beginning with his treatment of the young actress Sibyl Vane, while the portrait, hidden in a locked room, records every sin on its face.

Oscar Wilde first published the novel in a magazine in 1890 and expanded it into a book in 1891, adding a preface of aphorisms, among them 'There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.' At his trials in 1895 it was quoted against him. It is his only novel. His very different prison letter, written a few years later, is De Profundis.

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was born in Dublin, studied classics at Trinity College and Oxford, and became the most quotable man in London, the leading voice of the movement that preached art for art's sake. Between 1892 and 1895 his comedies filled the theatres, and his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, caused a sensation.

At the height of his fame he was convicted for his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas and sentenced to two years of hard labour, an experience he wrote about in De Profundis. He died in exile in Paris, poor and broken, at forty-six. The Importance of Being Earnest remains one of the funniest plays in English.