Original Written in his distinctively dazzling manner, Oscar Wilde"s story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is the author"s most popular work. The tale of Dorian Gray"s moral disintegration caused a scandal when it first appeared in 1890, but though Wilde was attacked for the novel"s corrupting influence, he responded that there is, in fact, "a terrible moral in Dorian Gray".