Dorian Gray wishes that his portrait would age while he remains young, and the wish is granted, and he pursues a life of pleasure while the portrait records every sin. Wilde wrote the novel quickly, scandalized Victorian England, and expanded it for book publication. The prose is epigrammatic, the decadence seductive, the moral eventually clear. Dorian's corruption remains invisible to the world. The portrait cannot lie. Wilde himself would be destroyed by scandal five years later. The novel anticipates his fate. The picture tells the truth. It is not a pretty picture.