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
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