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The Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde
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Oscar Wilde’s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, first appeared, in a shorter
version, in Lippincott’s Magazine in the Summer of 1890. Devoted
to a school of thought and a mode of sensibility known as aestheticism,
Wilde believed that art possesses an intrinsic value—that it
is beautiful and therefore has worth, and thus needs serve no
other purpose, be it moral or political. This attitude was revolutionary
in Victorian England, where popular belief held that art was
not only a function of morality but also a means of enforcing
it. The novel is florid and echoes themes that became pronounced
in the three-act tragedy that Oscar Wilde made of his life.
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