Oscar Wilde adored public attention in any form, but even he was taken aback by the storm of indignation that The Picture of Dorian Gray aroused. Victorian readers found the novel immoral, decadent, horrifying. Released first in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, expanded for book publication in 1891, The Picture of Dorian Gray has come to be regarded as a flawed yet fascinating work, "ornamented with brilliant and precious descriptions like a beautiful vase in which some poisonous snake has been hidden," according to Andre Maurois. The "poison" (Wilde himself uses that imagery) is homosexuality, not so much hidden as thinly veiled within Wilde's lapidary prose.
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