The 100 best novels: No 27 The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891)

Wilde's brilliantly allusive moral tale of youth, beauty and corruption was greeted with howls of protest on publication



Robert McCrum introduces the series

Of all the books in this series, Oscar Wilde's only novel enjoyed by far the worst reception on its publication. The reviews were dreadful, the sales poor, and it was not until many years after Wilde's death that this remarkable work of imagination was recognised as a classic.

Its gestation was troubled, too. First commissioned in the summer of 1889 by an American editor for Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, Wilde initially submitted a fairy tale "The Fisherman and his Soul", which was rejected. Eventually, his typescript for The Picture of Dorian Gray was delivered in April 1890, whereupon Lippincott's editor declared that "in its present condition there are a number of things an innocent woman would make an exception to".