Editing Oscar Wilde (section)

=== ''The Picture of Dorian Gray'' ===
{{main|The Picture of Dorian Gray|l1=''The Picture of Dorian Gray''}}
[[File:Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle green plaque (Westminster).jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|Plaque commemorating the dinner between Wilde, [[Arthur Conan Doyle]] and the publisher of ''Lippincott's Monthly Magazine'' on 30 August 1889 at the [[Langham Hotel, London]], that led to Wilde writing ''The Picture of Dorian Gray'']]
The first version of ''The Picture of Dorian Gray'' was published as the lead story in the July 1890 edition of ''[[Lippincott's Monthly Magazine]]'', along with five others.{{sfn|Mason|1972|p=105}} The story begins with a man painting a picture of Gray. When Gray, who has a "face like ivory and rose leaves", sees his finished portrait, he breaks down. Distraught that his beauty will fade while the portrait stays beautiful, he inadvertently makes a [[Deal with the Devil|Faustian bargain]] in which only the painted image grows old while he stays beautiful and young. For Wilde, the purpose of art would be to guide life as if beauty alone were its object. As Gray's portrait allows him to escape the corporeal ravages of his hedonism, Wilde sought to juxtapose the beauty he saw in art with daily life.<ref name="Mendelsohn" />

[[File:Oscar, Constance and Cyril Wilde 1892.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|left|Oscar, Cyril and Constance Wilde during their summer holiday in [[Felbrigg]], southwest of [[Cromer]], Norfolk in 1892]]
Reviewers immediately criticised the novel's decadence and homosexual allusions; the ''[[Daily Chronicle (United Kingdom)|Daily Chronicle]]'' for example, called it "unclean", "poisonous", and "heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction".<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Ross |first=Alex |author-link=Alex Ross (music critic) |date=1 August 2011 |title=Deceptive Picture: How Oscar Wilde painted over "Dorian Gray" |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/08/08/deceptive-picture |access-date=3 August 2011 |magazine=[[The New Yorker]] |archive-date=6 October 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141006051046/http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/08/08/deceptive-picture |url-status=live}}</ref> Wilde vigorously responded, writing to the editor of the ''Scots Observer'', in which he clarified his stance on ethics and aesthetics in art – "If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly will see its moral lesson."{{sfn|Holland|Hart-Davis|2000|pp=433, 435, 438, 441, 446}} He nevertheless revised it extensively for book publication in 1891: six new chapters were added, some overtly decadent passages and homo-eroticism excised, and a preface was included consisting of twenty-two epigrams, such as "Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."<ref>{{cite book |title=The Picture of Dorian Gray |date=1994 |publisher=From Project Gutenberg transcription |chapter=Preface |chapter-url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm |access-date=30 August 2010 |archive-date=6 November 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191106080616/http://www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm |url-status=live}}</ref>{{sfn|Mason|1972|p=341}}

Contemporary reviewers and modern critics have postulated numerous possible sources of the story, a search Jershua McCormack argues is futile because Wilde "has tapped a root of Western folklore so deep and ubiquitous that the story has escaped its origins and returned to the oral tradition".{{sfn|Raby|1997|p=111}} Wilde claimed the plot was "an idea that is as old as the history of literature but to which I have given a new form".{{sfn|Holland|Hart-Davis|2000|p=435}} Modern critic Robin McKie considered the novel to be technically mediocre, saying that the conceit of the plot had guaranteed its fame, but the device is never pushed to its full.<ref>McKie, Robin (25 January 2009). [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/25/classics-picture-dorian-gray-wilde "Classics Corner: The Picture of Dorian Gray"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130624195141/http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/25/classics-picture-dorian-gray-wilde |date=24 June 2013}}. ''The Guardian''.</ref> On the other hand, [[Robert McCrum]] of ''[[The Guardian]]'' lists it among the 100 best novels ever written in English, calling it "an arresting, and slightly camp, exercise in late-Victorian [[Gothic fiction|gothic]]".<ref name="guardian">{{cite news |last=McCrum |first=Robert |title=The 100 best novels: No 27 – The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891) |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/24/100-best-novels-picture-dorian-gray-oscar-wilde |url-status=live |work=The Guardian |date=24 March 2014 |access-date=11 August 2018 |archive-date=12 August 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180812053713/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/24/100-best-novels-picture-dorian-gray-oscar-wilde}}</ref> The novel has been the subject of many adaptations to film and stage, and one of its most quoted lines, "there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about", features in [[Monty Python]]'s "Oscar Wilde sketch" in an episode of ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]''.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus: All the Words, Vol. 2 |date=1989 |publisher=Pantheon Books |page=230}}</ref>