The Picture of Dorian Gray.

A classic that I had never read until now. I must say that watching Dorian Gray, the 2009 adaptation directed by Oliver Parker, has something to do with it.

Written in his distinctly dazzling manner, Oscar Wilde's story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is the author's most popular work. The tale of Dorian Gray's moral disintegration caused a scandal when it first appeared in 1890, but though Wilde was attacked for the novel's corrupting influence, he responded that there is, in fact, "a terrible moral in Dorian Gray." Just a few years later, the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it represented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wilde's homosexual liaisons, which resulted in his imprisonment. Of Dorian Gray's relationship to autobiography, Wilde noted in a letter, "Basil Wallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be —in other ages, perhaps."

Technical description:
Title: The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Author: Oscar Wilde.
Publisher: The Modern Library.
Edition: New York (USA), 2004 (1890).
Pages: 266 pages.
ISBN: 0-375-75151-3