The Picture of Dorian Gray Essay & Criticism

The Picture of Dorian Gray Critical Overview

When first published in England, The Picture of Dorian Gray met with a storm of negative reviews, many of which attacked the book in virulent terms for its alleged immorality. The Daily Chronicle, for example, assailed its "effeminate frivolity, its studied insincerity, its theatrical cynicism, its tawdry mysticism, its flippant philosophisings and the contaminating trail of garish vulgarity" (quoted in Norbert Kohl's Oscar Wilde: The Works of a Conformist Rebel). The anonymous critic for the St. James's Gazette affected a manner of even greater disgust when he wrote, "not wishing to offend the nostrils of decent persons, we do not propose to analyse [the novel] . . . that would be to advertise the developments of an esoteric prurience" (quoted in Michael Patrick Gillespie's "The Picture of Dorian Gray: What the World Thinks Me"). This critic even ventured the opinion that he would be pleased to see Wilde or his...
(read more)