On its first publication The Picture of Dorian Gray was regarded as dangerously modern in its depiction of fin-de-siecle decadence.

In this updated version of the Faust story, the tempter is Lord Henry Wotton, who lives selfishly for amoral pleasure; Dorian's good angel is the portrait painter Basil Hallward, whom Dorian murders.

The book highlights the tension between the polished surface of high society and the life of secret vice.

Although sin is punished in the end the book has a flavour of the elegantly perverse. With an Afterword by Peter Harness.