Gray’s writing abilities-and his handsome looks-impressed Oscar Wilde, who underwrote the cost of publishing Gray’s first collection of poems, Silverpoints. He was a friend of Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon, who published his fiction in their literary magazine, The Dial. His first published work, a translation of a Verlaine poem, appeared in 1890 in a “uranian” periodical called The Artist and Journal of Home Culture. Ambitious and intelligent, he worked hard, fell in with the right crowd, worked his way up the Civil Service ladder to become a librarian in the Foreign Office, published some poetry, and made it into Wilde’s inner circle before being overthrown by Lord Alfred Douglas. John Gray was born in 1866 as a poor lad, the oldest of eight. And she backs up her theory with some convincing quotations from Wilde and his contemporaries, as well as from newspaper reports. His name was John Gray, a minor British poet about whom she has written a number of works. WAS THERE a real-life model for Dorian Gray? Opinion among Wilde scholars is divided, but Jerusha Hull McCormack, who has written a book titled The Man Who Was Dorian Gray (2006), is quite sure there was.
