The Picture of Dorian Gray. London: Ward, Lock & Bowden Limited [1895]. Second Edition. Rebound in half morocco cloth boards, title lettered in gilt within a gilt panel to spine. Bookplate to pastedown, lacking publisher’s catalogue to rear. A fine copy in handsome early binding.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde’s first novel, and was first published in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, July 1890. Six new chapters are added to the first appearance in book form (1891), with many other additions and variations.

This latter-day gothic novel tells of Dorian Gray, a young man whose Faustian bargain keeps him youthful and handsome while a painting of him mutates with each debauched act by the hedonist, a reminder of the effect each moral transgression has had upon his soul, with each sin displayed as a disfigurement of his form, or through a sign of aging. One of the greatest works in the history of western literature of a very profound and timeless love story. [Mason 328].