The Picture of Dorian Gray biography, "Oscar Wilde" (1989), the literary critic Richard Ellmann said that: Wilde does not name the book, but at his trial he conceded that it was, or almost [was], Huysmans's "À rebours" ... to a correspondent, he wrote that he had played a 'fantastic variation' upon "À rebours", and someday must write it down. The references in "Dorian Gray" to specific chapters are deliberately inaccurate. 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
The Picture of Dorian Gray (opera) never should have mentioned the girl to Lord Henry, who retorts that Dorian will always tell him everything. Dorian then asks how Lord Henry would react at the idea that he murdered Basil Hallward. Lord Henry is dismissive and changes the topic to the mystery of Dorian's continual youth, comparing Dorian's life to his own lost youth. He asks Dorian to join him on a riding excursion the next day as he leaves. Dorian picks up a hand mirror, looks into it, then throws it down in disgust and smashes it under his feet. "Scene 7" Alone in the attic,