The Picture of Dorian Gray

Packaged in handsome and affordable trade editions, Clydesdale Classics is a new series of essential literary works. From the musings of literary geniuses like Mark Twain in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to the striking personal narrative of Harriet Jacobs in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, this new series is a comprehensive collection of our literary history through the words of the exceptional few. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece and lone novel, has endured as a significant piece of literature partly due to its philosophical nature and artful prose, and partly because of the stir it caused upon its initial publication. Published originally in 1890 in Lippincott’s Magazine, The Picture of Dorian Gray—often deemed by Wilde’s contemporaries to be “indecent”—tells the story of an attractive young man eponymous with the title who desires to be eternally young. Dorian is the subject of a portrait by a painter named Basil Hallward, who deems Gray’s beauty