ABSTRACT
in the preface which Henry James himself wrote for the “New York” edition of The Wings of the Dove he discussed in nearly exhaustive detail the aims or intentions he had had in writing this novel, and all that is left for a later and less qualified voice to add are a few things which modesty, or a fear of egoism, forbade the author himself to utter. The Wings of the Dove is the first member of the great trilogy which constitutes the final phase of James’s work. In the past there has been a tendency—not now, I think, so widespread—to depreciate this final phase, to suggest that it is really a little too much of a good thing. That attitude shows a complete misunderstanding of the whole of our author’s evolution, which was always, from the beginning, a reaching after the perfection which this novel, The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl together represent—a perfection at once intellectually formal and deeply moving.
