Critics Slammed Oscar Wilde’s Only Novel, The Picture Of Dorian Gray

One of the most interesting facts about Oscar Wilde is that his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was slammed by critics. Oscar Wilde only had one novel published throughout his whole life, despite his renown as a writer. Due to its decadence and homoerotic themes, The Picture of Dorian Gray received negative reviews. In the July 1890 edition of Lippincott's, a Philadelphia journal with English circulation, the tale of a guy who never ages, although his image becomes shabby, was published. The novel is now frequently taught in schools and esteemed for its commitment to the nineteenth-century aesthetic movement.

Despite receiving mixed reviews when it was first published in Lippincott's Magazine in 1890, Wilde's infamously hedonistic book is now hailed as a masterpiece. The protagonist of the book is a lovely guy who, despite committing mortal sins, is able to enjoy everlasting youth and beauty since a painting of him deteriorates in his place. The homoerotic connotations of the novel were lambasted by many as being "effeminate," “unmanly,” and “leprous.”