The Picture of Dorian Gray edition of the novel; nonetheless, by June 1891, Wilde was defending "The Picture of Dorian Gray" against accusations that it was a bad book. In the essay "The Artist as Critic", Oscar Wilde said that: In the 19th century, the critical reception of the novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1890) was poor. The book critic of "The Irish Times" said, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" was "first published to some scandal." Such book reviews achieved for the novel a "certain notoriety for being 'mawkish and nauseous', 'unclean', 'effeminate' and 'contaminating'." Such moralistic scandal arose from the novel's homoeroticism, which
The Picture of Dorian Gray (opera) Dorian contemplates the degradation of his life and his evil influence on others. Thinking about the young girl with whom he broke off, he removes the cover from his portrait, hoping to find some diminution of his temporal corruption. To his dismay, he sees instead a new look of hypocrisy and corruption. Hoping to destroy the one visual proof of his evil, he stabs the portrait with the same knife used to kill Basil. A terrible scream is heard. The portrait has regained its original look of the young Dorian, whilst on the floor lies the horribly disfigured body of