The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde (1890)
“A man sells his soul for eternal beauty — and discovers that beauty without conscience is just a more elegant form of decay.”
At a Glance
Young, beautiful Dorian Gray sits for a portrait by the artist Basil Hallward. Under the corrupting influence of the witty hedonist Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian wishes that the portrait would age in his place. The wish comes true. Dorian remains eternally young while the portrait absorbs the record of his sins. He drives his actress lover Sibyl Vane to suicide, descends into a life of vice, commits murder, and blackmails a former friend into destroying the body. When he finally stabs the portrait in an attempt to escape his guilt, he dies — old and hideous — while the portrait is restored to its original beauty.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
The Picture of Dorian Gray is Wilde's only novel and one of the foundational texts of Gothic and Decadent literature. It was first published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in July 1890, where it caused immediate scandal — its editors removed roughly 500 words of the most suggestive material before publication without Wilde's knowledge. Wilde revised and expanded the text for its 1891 book edition, adding preface, new chapters, and additional depth. The novel was cited as evidence at his 1895 trial. It has never been out of print.
Diction Profile
Highly formal with lapidary wit — Latinate vocabulary, sustained irony, and the aphorism as structural unit. Victorian surface propriety deployed against Victorian propriety's values.
Extremely high in the descriptive passages; deliberately concentrated into epigrams in Lord Henry's dialogue. Wilde uses synesthesia frequently (the scent of roses becomes a color, music becomes a texture). The portrait itself is the novel's central metaphor