The Picture of Dorian Gray (THE GREAT CLASSICS LIBRARY)

The central image of this story is so powerful it has become a metaphor with the power of ancient myth: a man whose portrait grows old while he maintains an unnatural youthfulness - and contains to live a pleasure-centered, amoral life. Despite Wilde's claim that "no artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style." the book has the power of an old-fashioned morality tale.