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 (1945 film) and heartless life. Years later, Dorian Gray is forty but looks twenty-two, unchanged from when Hallward painted the portrait. London society is awestruck at his unchanging appearance. Over eighteen years of pointless debauchery, the portrait has remained locked away, with Gray holding the only key. Gray has become paranoid no others see the portrait and he repeatedly fires servants who are too inquisitive. Over the years, the portrait of the young, handsome, Dorian Gray has warped into a hideous, demon-like creature reflecting Dorian's sins. Basil Hallward, the painter, eventually sees his painting. Shocked at its disfigurement, scarred "as if some