The Picture of Dorian Gray

320 pages, paperback. Oscar Wilde's tale of a Faustian pact in Victorian England, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" is a both a slow-burning Gothic horror and a brilliant philosophical investigation of youth, beauty and desire. This "Penguin Classics" edition is edited with an introduction and notes by Robert Mighall. Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life; indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence. "The Picture of Dorian Gray" was a succes de scandale. Early readers were shocked by its hints at unspeakable sins, and the book was later used as evidence against Wilde at the Old Bailey in 1895. It has lost none of its power to fascinate and disturb. This definitive edition includes a selection of contemporary reviews condemning the novels immorality, and the introduction to the first "Penguin Classics" edition by Peter Ackroyd.