The Picture of Dorian Gray
byOscar Wilde
CompletedHorror,DramaPublic domain
Public-domain text, with thanks to Standard Ebooks and other free-text projects.
The Picture of Dorian Gray was first published as a serial in Lippencott’s Monthly Magazine, and the publishers thought it would so offend readers that they removed nearly 500 words without Wilde’s approval. Wilde soon expanded it and republished it as a novel, including a short preface justifying his art. Even though his contemporaries considered it so offensive that some argued for his prosecution, Dorian Gray today survives as a classic philosophical novel that explores themes of aestheticism and double lives.
