Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray

The portrait, which Basil Hallward painted of Dorian Gray revealed the face of an Adonis, and when he saw the finished picture of himself, the beautiful young aesthete exclaimed: "Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me, and gives something to it. Oh, it it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I caould be always what I am now!" His perverse aspiration was strangely fulfilled. Abandoning himself to every sin which his profligate  mind could devise, the wealthy and exquisite young man brought misery and disgrace on all who accepted his companionship, but Dorian Gray still wore the outward appearance of serene beauty. It was upon the portrait, locked away in his attic, that the marks of degeneration  mysteriously appeared, for the painting of Adinis slowly transformed into the likeness of a satyr.

This celebrated fantasy is developed as vividly as one of Edgar Poe's macabre narratives, and the climax is fulfilled in murder and suicide. But although The Picture of Dorian Gray rabks as a tense and full-blooded story, it is distinguished also by teh habitual brilliance of Oscar Wilde's witty and epigrammatic style.

The cover shows an engraving by Cecil Keeling.