The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only novel by Oscar Wilde, first published in 1890. Fearing the story was indecent, prior to publication the magazine's editor deleted roughly five hundred words without Wilde's knowledge. Despite that censorship, The Picture of Dorian Gray offended the moral sensibilities of British book reviewers, some of whom said that Oscar Wilde merited prosecution for violating the laws guarding public morality. Wilde aggressively defended his novel and art in correspondence with the British press, although he personally made excisions of some of the most controversial material. The longer and revised version presented here was first published in 1891, with an aphoristic preface-a defence of the artist's rights and of art for art's sake-based in part on his press defences of the novel the previous year. The content, style, and presentation of the preface made it famous in its own right, as a literary and artistic manifesto.