Henry James, The Wings of the Dove

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The Wings of the Dove

, written after, but published before

The Ambassadors

, is the fulcrum of the august trinity of novels,

The Ambassadors

(1903),

The Wings of the Dove

(1902) and

The Golden Bowl

(1904), that James unleashed in the early years of the twentieth century and which constituted what came to be known as his major phase. Weighty in size, they are mighty engines, profoundly serious products of a lifetime’s wisdom, but also daringly innovative, shovelling up the traditional novel into the indeterminacies of the modern.

The Wings of the Dove

, as James recounts in his Preface, had “ignominiously failed . . . to see itself ‘serialized’” (8), but this proved to be a liberation: unhampered by the exigencies of serialization, he was pleased with his two volume, ten Book…

4171 words

Citation: Righelato, Pat. "The Wings of the Dove". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 May 2015 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8174, accessed 19 March 2024.]

8174 The Wings of the Dove 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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