The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde Full name Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde. (1854 — 1900) A famous Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, Wilde became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his witty plays, as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death. The Picture of Dorian Gray tells the story of a handsome young man, whose full-length portrait was painted by Basil Hallward, an artist infatuated by Dorian's beauty. Through Basil, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, and he soon is enthralled by the aristocrat's hedonistic life. Fearing that his beauty will fade, Dorian expresses the desire to sell his soul, to ensure that the picture, rather than he, will age and fade...