Through Basil, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton and is soon enthralled by the aristocrat's hedonistic worldview: that beauty and sensual fulfilment are the only things worth pursuing in life.

Knowing that he will lose his beauty with time, Dorian impulsively chooses to sell his soul and asks for the portrait, rather than himself, to age and fade.

Wilde described that incident as being the inspiration for the novel: In December, 1887, I gave a sitting to a Canadian artist who was staying with some friends of hers and mine in South Kensington.

On 30 August 1889, Stoddart dined with Oscar Wilde, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and T. P. Gill[5] at the Langham Hotel, and commissioned novellas from each writer.

[6] In July 1889, Wilde published "The Portrait of Mr. W. H.", a very different story but one that has a similar title to The Picture of Dorian Gray and has been described as "a preliminary sketch of some of its major themes", including homosexuality.

[7][8] The literary merits of The Picture of Dorian Gray impressed Stoddart, but he told the publisher, George Lippincott, "in its present condition there are a number of things an innocent woman would make an exception to.

[10] For the fuller 1891 novel, Wilde retained Stoddart's edits and made some of his own, while expanding the text from thirteen to twenty chapters and added the book's famous preface.

[6] In the magazine edition (1890), Basil tells Lord Henry how he "worships" Dorian, and begs him not to "take away the one person that makes my life absolutely lovely to me."

Wilde's textual additions were about the "fleshing out of Dorian as a character" and providing details of his ancestry that made his "psychological collapse more prolonged and more convincing.

[17] The original typescript submitted to Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, now housed at UCLA, had been largely forgotten except by professional Wilde scholars until the 2011 publication of The Picture of Dorian Gray: An Annotated, Uncensored Edition by the Belknap Press.

This edition includes the roughly 500 words of text deleted by J. M. Stoddart, the story's initial editor, prior to its publication in Lippincott's in 1890.

To communicate how the novel should be read, Wilde used aphorisms to explain the role of the artist in society, the purpose of art, and the value of beauty.

The hedonistic Lord Henry thinks that beauty is the only aspect of life worth pursuing, prompting Dorian to wish that his portrait would age instead of himself.

Dorian locks the portrait up, and for eighteen years, he experiments with every vice, influenced by a morally poisonous French novel that Lord Henry gave him.

Deciding that only a full confession will suffice, Dorian finds the knife with which he murdered Basil and stabs the picture in a bout of fury.

Dorian initially falls under Lord Henry's influence and "narcissistic perspective on art and life", despite Basil's warnings, but "eventually recognizes its limitations".

[24] Through Lord Henry's dialogue, Wilde is suggesting, as professor Dominic Manganiello pointed out, that creating art enacts the innate ability to conjure criminal impulses.

[25] The novel's representation of homoeroticism is subtle yet present by manifesting itself through interactions between male characters in a way that challenges the strict social norms of Victorian England.

[28] Dorian, with his eternal youth and beauty, challenges traditional male roles and the slow decay of his portrait reflects the deception of societal expectations.

Additionally, the few female characters in the story, such as Sybil, are portrayed in ways that critique the limited roles and harsh judgments reserved for women during that era.

[28] The novel's exploration of these themes provides commentary on the structures of Victorian society, revealing the performative side of gender roles that restrict and define both men and women.

Throughout, Lord Henry appears unaware of the effect of his actions upon the young man; and so frivolously advises Dorian, that "the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.

The anonymous "poisonous French novel" that leads Dorian to his fall is a thematic variant of À rebours (1884), by Joris-Karl Huysmans.

[41]Some commentators have suggested that The Picture of Dorian Gray was influenced by the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli's (anonymously published) first novel Vivian Grey (1826), as "a kind of homage from one outsider to another".

In the 30 June 1890 issue of the Daily Chronicle, the book critic said that Wilde's novel contains "one element ... which will taint every young mind that comes in contact with it."

[48] Due to controversy, retailing chain W H Smith, then Britain's largest bookseller,[49] withdrew every copy of the July 1890 issue of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine from its bookstalls in railway stations.

[52] In a 2009 review, critic Robin McKie considers the novel to be technically mediocre, saying that the conceit of the plot guaranteed its fame, but the device is never pushed to its full.

[53] On the other hand, in March 2014, Robert McCrum of The Guardian listed it among the 100 best novels ever written in English, calling it "an arresting, and slightly camp, exercise in late-Victorian gothic".

[54] Though not initially a widely appreciated component of Wilde's body of work following his death in 1900, The Picture of Dorian Gray has come to attract a great deal of academic and popular interest, and has been the subject of many adaptations to film and stage.

Perhaps the best-known and most critically praised film adaptation is 1945's The Picture of Dorian Gray, which earned an Academy Award for best black-and-white cinematography, as well as a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Angela Lansbury, who played Sibyl Vane.