This version of the essay is significantly revised from the article that first appeared in the January 1889 issue of The Nineteenth Century.
Wilde presents the essay as a Socratic dialogue between two characters, Vivian and Cyril, who are named after his own sons.
[2][3] Vivian tells Cyril of an article he has been writing called "The Decay of Lying: A Protest".
He writes, "if something cannot be done to check, or at least to modify, our monstrous worship of facts, Art will become sterile and beauty will pass away from the land."
As Michèle Mendelssohn points out, "in an era when sociology was still in its infancy, psychology wasn’t yet a discipline, and theories of performativity were still a long way off, Wilde's essay touched on a profound truth about human behaviour in social situations.