The Picture of Dorian Gray August 1889, Stoddart dined with Oscar Wilde, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and T. P. Gill at the Langham Hotel, and commissioned novellas from each writer. Conan Doyle promptly submitted "The Sign of the Four" (1890) to Stoddart, but Wilde was more dilatory; Conan Doyle's second Sherlock Holmes novel was published in the February 1890 edition of "Lippincott's Monthly Magazine", yet Stoddart did not receive Wilde's manuscript for "The Picture of Dorian Gray" until 7 April 1890, nine months after having commissioned the novel from him. The literary merits of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" impressed Stoddart, but, as an editor,
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