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 authors most popular work. The tale of Dorian Gray's moral disintegration caused a scandal when it first appeared in 1890 but though Wilde was attacked for the novels corrupting influence 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.
