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.
