The Picture of Dorian Gray

In a London studio the painter Basil Hallward puts the last touches to a portrait of a beautiful young man, Dorian Gray, while his witty friend Lord Henry Wotton fills Dorian's head with the idea that youth and pleasure are all that matter. Looking at the finished picture, Dorian wishes that it could grow old instead of him. Oscar Wilde's only novel, sparkling with epigrams and shadowed by Gothic horror, caused a scandal when it first appeared in 1890. This is his revised text of 1891, with its famous preface. Read it for its wit and its haunting moral puzzle.