Lord Henry Wotton observes the artist Basil Hallward painting the portrait of a handsome young man named Dorian Gray. When he asks to meet Dorian, Basil is at first hesitant, but agrees. Dorian, who had been completely unaware of his own beauty, becomes enthralled by Lord Wotton's world view and begins to think that beauty is the only worthwhile aspect of life - the only thing left to pursue. However, Dorian realises that his beauty will fade and expresses, out loud, a desire to sell his soul to ensure that the portrait Basil is painting will age - whilst his own appearance remains unchanged...
Oscar Wilde was an 19th century Irish writer whose works include the play The Importance of Being Earnest and the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. He is also one of the Victorian era's most famous dandies, a wit whose good-humored disdain for convention became less favored after he was jailed for homosexuality. Wilde grew up in a prosperous family and distinguished himself at Dublin's Trinity College and London's Oxford. He published his first volume of poems in 1881 and found work in England as a critic and lecturer, but it was his socializing (and self-promotion) that made him famous, even before the 1890 publication of The Picture of Dorian Gray. In 1895, at the height of his popularity, his relationship with the young poet Lord Alfred Douglas was declared inappropriately intimate by Douglas's father, the Marquess of Queensberry. Wilde sued for libel, but the tables were turned when it became clear there was enough evidence to charge Wilde with "gross indecency" for his homosexual relationships. He was convicted and spent two years in jail, after which he went into self-imposed exile in France, bankrupt and in ill health.
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