The Picture of Dorian Gray, Paperback/Oscar Wilde (65e4531e-7a25-4f80-a07c-d450d65718c9)

Introduction by Jeffrey Eugenides Written in his distinctively dazzling manner, Oscar Wilde s story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is the author s most popular work. The tale of Dorian Gray s moral disintegration caused a scandal when it rst appeared in 1890, but though Wilde was attacked for the novel s corrupting in uence, 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 Wilde s homosexual liaisons, which resulted in his imprisonment. Of Dorian Gray s 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 be in other ages, perhaps. "