This classic novel about the frailty of human beauty and sensual experience and the futility of vanity remains as powerful today as when it was first published in 1891. A truly extraordinary piece of work, The Picture of Dorian Gray has come to be regarded as the finest novel of the aesthetic and decadent movements. In this cautionary tale, the handsome Dorian Gray wishes that his portrait should age rather than himself, and then launches on a life of excess and depravity, with shocking consequences.