Picture of Dorian Gray, The (Collector's Library)

A Picture of Dorian Gray was first published by Lippincott's Magazine and then expanded and published in book form in 1890. It was regarded as dangerously modern in its portrayal of fashionable fin de siecle decadence. Wilde draws on traditional patterns to create a powerful new Gothic tale. In this updated version of the Faust story, the tempter is Lord Henry Wotton who lives selfishly for amoral pleasure; Dorian's good angel or conscience is the portrait painter Basil Hallward whom Dorian murders. The book highlights the tension between the polished surface of high society and the life of secret vice. Although sin is punished in the end, the book has a strong flavour of the elegantly perverse. Wilde asserted in his Preface to the expanded edition: 'There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all'.Wilde, Oscar is the author of 'Picture of Dorian Gray, The (Collector's Library)', published 2009 under ISBN 9781904633150 and ISBN 1904633153.