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
Wings (Kuzmin novel) to approve same-sex love in print: "Wilde in "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1890) only hinted that his hero's inner corruption resulted from his suppression of his true nature; Gide did not dare to name the attraction of his hero in "The Immoralist" (1902); Proust felt impelled to engage in all manner of subterfuge, and Forster wrote "Maurice" for the desk drawer." Vladimir Nabokov parodied Kuzmin's novel in his own short novel "The Eye", using "Smurov" as the name of a male protagonist and "Vanya" of a female one. Wings (Kuzmin novel) Wings () was the first Russian novel centred