The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde’s classic, alluring novel of a man so obsessed with his appearance that he sacrifices his soul for eternal youth—with an introduction by Jeffrey Eugenides

Now a critically acclaimed Broadway play starring Sarah Snook!

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read

Fascinated by his own beautiful portrait, Dorian Gray makes a Faustian pact to exchange his soul for perpetual youth and beauty. Guided by Lord Henry Wotton, he embarks on a life of corruption, satisfying his desires while still appearing as a respectable gentleman to society. Only Dorian’s portrait shows the signs of his moral decline.

An insightful depiction of a hidden life and a critique of the darker facets of late Victorian society, The Picture of Dorian Gray provides a chilling portrayal of a man confronting the reality of his soul. Shocking in its implications of forbidden transgressions, this novel was later used as evidence against Oscar Wilde during his 1895 trial for indecency.

Oscar Wilde’s only novel tells the story of a man consumed by narcissism and hedonism: Dorian Gray, a beautiful youth who possesses a unique painting of himself that accrues only the marks of age and sin for him, leaving his real face perpetually young, fresh, and innocent.

The novel blurs the lines between the Victorian gothic and the fantastic, both celebrating and criticizing the love of life and pleasure that Wilde himself is known for. At the time it was considered so scandalous that Wilde’s editor deleted sections without telling Wilde, and yet it still met with enormous backlash and accusations of moral corruption.

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