On this day in 1891 Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray was published. The novel had originally appeared in Lippincot's Monthly Magazine the previous summer, and caused an uproar for what one newspaper called "its effeminate frivolity, its studied insincerity, its theatrical cynicism, its tawdry mysticism, its flippant philosophizing, its contaminating trail of garish vulgarity." In revising for book publication, Wilde toned down some of the more overt homosexuality and the decadent theme, but added prefatory comments which late-Victorian England found equally offensive, such as "There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book ... FULL STORY »
