Poison Books and Moving Pictures: Vulgarity in The Picture of Dorian Gray

The fact that vulgarity was a principal concern in Wilde’s scandalous novel is evident in one of the book’s first reviews, which dismissed Dorian Gray when it first appeared in the pages of Lippincott’s magazine because of the “contaminating trail of garish vulgarity” that characterized the novel’s plot and its aesthetic,

borrowing Lord Henry’s condemnation of vulgarity in literature and directing it against Wilde himself:

So begins the June 30, 1890 unsigned book review in the Daily Chronicle. These two sentences leave little more to be said about the book, and, indeed, the review continues only a little longer, managing to state again in the next few lines how the book embodies “every abomination of vulgarity and squalor.”