The Picture of Dorian Gray (Annotated)

The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde, appearing as the lead story in Lippincott's Magazine in June 1890. The magazine's editors feared the story was indecent as submitted, so they censored roughly five-hundred words, without Wilde's knowledge, before publication. But even with that, the story was still greeted with outrage by British reviewers, some of whom suggested that Wilde should be prosecuted on moral grounds, leading Wilde to defend the novel aggressively in letters to the British press. Today, Wilde's fin de siècle novella is considered a classic. Read more