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50 free The Picture of Dorian Gray trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Picture of Dorian Gray trivia quiz covers Oscar Wilde's only novel from its first, censored magazine printing to the Technicolor portrait that won an Oscar. The easy questions ask who wrote it, what happens to the portrait, who paints it, which aristocrat corrupts Dorian, who Sibyl Vane is and how the story ends. From there it moves through the 1890 and 1891 texts, the famous preface, the French novel that poisons Dorian and the trial in which the book was read aloud against its author. The hard end is for people who have read both versions: the dinner at the Langham that also produced a Sherlock Holmes novel, the 500 words the editor cut, the bookseller that pulled the magazine from its railway stalls, the Canadian painter whose portrait sitting sparked the idea, the Disraeli novel that may have named Sibyl Vane, the museum that owns the 1945 film's monstrous portrait and the awards named after Dorian. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries on the novel, Oscar Wilde, the 1945 and 2009 films, Penny Dreadful and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our Oscar Wilde, Gothic literature and Victorian novels quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Picture of Dorian Gray was written by which Irish author?
Oscar Wilde
It was the only novel he ever wrote, and it was widely ignored by critics until the 1980s.
Q 02What happens to Dorian Gray's portrait as he pursues a life of vice?
It ages and records his sins while he stays young
He impulsively wishes the picture would age instead of him, effectively selling his soul.
Q 03Which artist paints the portrait of Dorian Gray?
Basil Hallward
Wilde said Basil was 'what I think I am', while Lord Henry was what the world thought him.
Q 04Which aristocrat's hedonistic worldview seduces Dorian into believing beauty and pleasure are all that matter?
Lord Henry Wotton
Basil tells him: 'You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing.'
Q 05Sibyl Vane, the young woman Dorian falls for and cruelly rejects, works as what?
An actress
She performs Shakespeare in a dingy working-class theatre, and her love for Dorian ruins her ability to act.
Q 06By what pet name does Sibyl Vane refer to Dorian, the only clue her brother later has to his identity?
Prince Charming
Years later James Vane hears the name used in an opium den and finally tracks Dorian down.
Q 07How does Dorian escape James Vane when confronted in the opium den?
He shows his face is too young to have known Sibyl
A woman from the den then tells James that Dorian has not aged in eighteen years.
Q 08How does James Vane, who has been stalking Dorian for revenge, meet his end?
Accidentally shot during a shooting party
Wilde only added James Vane for the 1891 book edition, giving the story a hint of class struggle.
Q 09After murdering Basil, Dorian blackmails which former friend into using chemistry to destroy the body?
Alan Campbell
Campbell later shoots himself; Adrian Singleton is another friend Dorian ruined through opium.
Q 10How does the novel end for Dorian?
He stabs the portrait and is found dead, withered and old
The servants identify the corpse only by its rings, while the painting is young and beautiful again.
Q 11For how many years does Dorian keep the portrait locked away while indulging every vice?
Eighteen
A woman in the opium den confirms to James Vane that Dorian has not aged in all that time.
Q 12The 'poisonous' yellow French novel that Lord Henry gives Dorian is generally identified with which real book?
À rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans
Wilde conceded at his trial that it was 'or almost' Huysmans's book, though the chapter references in the novel are deliberately wrong.
Q 13The shorter first version of the story appeared in July 1890 in which American periodical?
Lippincott's Monthly Magazine
Q 21After the scandalised reviews of 1890, which retailer withdrew the magazine issue from its railway station bookstalls?
WHSmith
Reviewers called the story 'mawkish and nauseous', 'unclean' and 'contaminating', and some said Wilde deserved prosecution.
Q 22At Wilde's 1895 trials the prosecution read passages from the book aloud and called it what?
A 'perverted novel'
The lines came from the more explicit magazine version, and the trials damaged the book's reputation for decades.
Q 23Which critic, whom Wilde respected, wrote letters that Wilde admitted led him to modify one passage 'liable to misconstruction'?
Walter Pater
It ran as the first 100 pages of the issue; the expanded 20-chapter book followed in April 1891.
Q 14The 1889 dinner at the Langham Hotel where Wilde was commissioned to write the novel also produced which Sherlock Holmes book?
The Sign of the Four
Editor J. M. Stoddart commissioned both Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle that night; Doyle delivered promptly, Wilde took seven months.
Q 15Roughly how many words did editor J. M. Stoddart cut from the manuscript without Wilde's knowledge before the 1890 publication?
500
He removed passages alluding to homosexual desire and references to Sibyl and Hetty as 'mistresses'; the cuts were restored in a 2011 edition.
Q 16For the 1891 book edition Wilde expanded the story from thirteen chapters to how many?
Twenty
He also added the preface and the character of James Vane, Sibyl's vengeful brother.
Q 17The 2011 'uncensored' edition was based on Wilde's original typescript, which is housed at which university?
UCLA
It had been largely forgotten by all but Wilde scholars until Belknap Press published the annotated edition.
Q 18Wilde's famous preface, a manifesto for art for art's sake, is written as a series of what?
Epigrams
It first appeared in The Fortnightly Review a month before the book, answering the critics of the magazine version.
Q 19Wilde said the idea for the novel came in December 1887 when he sat for a portrait by a painter from which country?
Canada
Looking at Frances Richards's finished portrait he joked, 'This portrait will never grow older and I shall. If it was only the other way!'
Q 20In an 1894 letter Wilde wrote that Lord Henry was 'what the world thinks me'. Who did he say was 'what I would like to be'?
Dorian
Basil Hallward, he said, was 'what I think I am'.
Wilde otherwise denied that his 1891 revisions were a response to hostile reviews.
Q 24Scholars suggest Wilde chose the name Dorian in reference to which ancient Greek people?
The Dorians
They are argued to have introduced male same-sex initiation rituals to Greek culture, an allusion to 'Greek love'.
Q 25Some commentators trace the novel's influence to Vivian Grey, an 1826 novel by which British prime minister?
Benjamin Disraeli
Sibyl Vane's name may fuse Disraeli's novel Sybil with Vivian Grey's doomed love interest Violet Fane.
Q 26When Sibyl Vane kills herself, Lord Henry compares her to which tragic heroine from Hamlet?
Ophelia
James Vane's pursuit of his sister's lover likewise mirrors Laertes's revenge on Hamlet.
Q 27Wilde's 1889 story 'The Portrait of Mr. W. H.' has been called a preliminary sketch of the novel's themes. Whose sonnets is it about?
Shakespeare's
It speculates about the identity of the dedicatee of the sonnets and shares the novel's interest in homosexuality.
Q 28Lord Henry's advice that 'the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it' casts him in the role of which figure from the Faust legend?
The Devil
Unlike Faust, Dorian never signs a pact; the temptation is simply put in front of him and he takes it.
Q 29The 1945 MGM film of the novel won an Academy Award in which category?
Black-and-white cinematography
Harry Stradling won it; Angela Lansbury was nominated for playing Sibyl Vane and won a Golden Globe.
Q 30The 1945 film is in black and white except for brief inserts of the portrait shot in what process?
Three-strip Technicolor
Ivan Albright's hideous final portrait, painted for the film, now hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago.