1. The story of Oscar Wilde's novel "Portrait of Dorian Gray"
The novel "Portrait of Dorian Gray" had a real basis. Oscar Wilde's friends had an artist named Basily Ward. Wilde, once met with a very beautiful model in his studio, exclaimed: "What a pity that he can not avoid old age with all his ugliness!". Basily replied that he was ready to paint a portrait every year, so that the laws of nature would reflec in a portrait, but not in the appearance of a beautiful model.

2. History of creation
Oscar Wilde wrote "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by the agreement with an American magazine. In July 1890, the novel was published. The publication in the magazine had a wide resonance, and the author decided to publish this work as a separate publication, including separate chapters to make the work "more weighty. It was for this particular edition that O. Wilde wrote a well-known "Foreword," consisting of 25 aphorisms. In the aphorisms the aesthetic theory of Oscar Wilde was presented in paradoxical form. In April 1891, having received a new look, the novel was published as a separate book.

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5. Review
The book «Portrait of Dorian Gray» by Oscar Wilde, immediately after the publication gained scandalous fame and caused controversial assessments of contemporaries, became a literary manifesto of European aesthetics and a masterpiece of English prose. Demonstratively rejecting the didactics and moralism of Victorian literature, Wilde, however, wrote a deeply moral book, where Art takes revenge for the trampled Beauty, betrayed Love and scolded Harmony. The dramatic, paradoxical, fascinating-intriguing story of Dorian Gray is a brilliant example of the "perfect use of imperfect means," in which, according to Wilde, is the "ethics of art."