Wings Of The Dove (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) - Plot & Excerpts
Of all of Henry James’s prodigious literary output—he wrote twenty-two novels (two unfinished); 112 shorter tales or stories; autobiographical works; twelve plays; a vast array of travel essays; scores of critical essays, commentaries, and reviews of all kinds; and an astonishing number of letters to family and friends—the three late novels seem to have won the most enduring critical acclaim. They were written, roughly one a year, in a burst of creative energy from 1901 to 1904 as James approached his sixtieth birthday. The original idea for Wings was formed about 1894 when James wrote in his notebooks, at the top of a list of a dozen potential stories: “La Mourante: the girl who is dying, the young man, and the girl he is engaged to.” The popular appeal of the three late novels has never quite matched their critical plaudits. For some, the reason is that the three works are not as accessible as much of James’s other work. The novels are stylistically complex, written in an allusive and poetic prose, and they depart from the “realism” of such earlier works as The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The American (1877), The Bostonians (1886), and Washington Square (1881), and from the allegorical structure of Roderick Hudson (1875-1876).
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