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."