The young, beautiful gentleman, Dorian Gray, is drawn into a double life of decadence by the seductive and fabulously witty Lord Henry Wotton. A Faustian bargain is made by Dorian in which his soul seems to be untouched by his indulgence of "wrong, fascinating, poisonous, delightful theories." It isn't until he comes face-to-face with his portrait that he sees the true condition of his soul.

Elegantly perverse, The Picture of Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde's only novel. The gothic story was first published as a series in the United States in 1890 by Lippincott's Monthly. Criticized by British reviewers as mawkish and unclean, revisions were demanded of the celebrated Irish playwright and writer prior to publication in Great Britain. Wilde's response to his critics are found in the book's Preface: "Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."

"[The Picture of Dorian Gray] ranks alongside Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) as a representation of how fin-de-si?cle literature explored the darkest recesses of Victorian society and the often disturbing private desires that lurked behind acceptable public faces." - Greg Buzwell, British Library