This is a story of moral corruption. Although not shocking by the standards of the late twentieth century, the book and its celebrated Preface,which contained the conclusion 'All art is quite useless', attracted such outraged reviews as 'Why go grubbing in muck-heaps?' on its publication.The later, kinder judgement of the DNB praised the work as being 'full of subtle impressionism and highly wrought epigram'.Crafted in brilliant prose, the book is of lasting importance as a singular example of Wilde's brilliance applied to the novel.The text is taken from the Paris edition published in Montmartre, 1908.

The Picture of Dorian Gray first came to public attention in an American periodical, Lipincott"s Monthly Magazine, during the summer of I89o.No sooner had the novel appeared than rival British journals condemned it outright. In the St Fames"s Gazette, Samuel Henry Jeyes deplored how W"dde treated "a subject merely because it was disgusting". Similarly, an anonymous contributor to the Daily Chronicle loathed what he regarded as a "gloating study of the mental and physical corruption of a fresh, fair and golden youth". Most repugnant of all were "its effeminate frivolity, its studied insincerity, its theatrical cynicism, its tawdry mysticism, its flippant philosophising, and the contaminating trail of garish vulgarity which is over all Mr Wdde"s elaborate Wardour Street aestheticism and obtrusively cheap scholarship". The novel proved offensive because it failed to show "a single good and holy impulse in human nature". These were scathing criticisms indeed. But worse was to come. The Scots Observer would pin these "disgusting" features down to one indecent fact: "it is false art-for its interest is medico-legal". Admitting that Wilde had "brains, and art,and style", the reviewer was sickened by the story of Dorian Gray, since it was, he insisted, fit for no one but" outlawed noblemen and perverted telegraph boys". In making such claims, the Scots Observer was alluding to the Cleveland Street affair (I889-9o), where police officers found young male Post Office workers supplementing their incomes by performing sexual favours for upper-class gendemen. How, then, could Wilde"s novel provoke this kind of response? What was it that made these readers cast suspicion on its methods and its morals? Why did a hostile reviewer claim the interest of the book was-of all things-"medico-legal"?

INTRODUCTION

PREFACE

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

NOTES