Oscar Wilde's only novel 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' was published in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1890 and provoked a storm of protest from Victorian society. ‘It is a tale spawned from the leprous literature of the French decadents — a poisoned book, the atmosphere of which is heavy with mephitic odors of moral and spiritual putrefaction’, wrote the critic from the Daily Chronicle. Oscar Wilde wrote a preface, which appeared separately in the Fortnightly Review in March 1891. It contains the famous passage: ‘Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.