The Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde (Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, 1890); audiobook read by Steven Crossley (W F Howes, 2012)
The story is justly famous and the epigrams easy to quote, yet the overall reading experience is rendered wearisome by Wilde’s tacked-on (and continuously hammered home) cod philosophy. The character of Sir Henry presumably inspired that of The Sphinx in Mystery Men.