The Picture of Dorian Gray - (Modern Library Classics) by Oscar Wilde (Paperback)

About the Book

When published in 1890, Oscar Wilde's version of the Faust myth, wherein a fashionable young man sells his soul for eternal youth while his portrait grows old, was attacked for its "mawkish and nauseous" tone. However, the novel has fascinated readers for over a century. This Paperback Classic edition includes an Introduction by Quentin Crisp.

Book Synopsis

Introduction by Jeffrey Eugenides - Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read

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 first appeared in 1890, but though Wilde was attacked for the novel's 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."

About the Author

Jeffrey Eugenides is the award-winning author of The Virgin Suicides; Middlesex, which won a Pulitzer Prize; and The Marriage Plot. Originally from Michigan, and educated at Brown University, he now lives in Berlin with his wife.