(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

Of the three late masterpieces that crown the extraordinary literary achievement of Henry James, The Wings of the Dove (1902) is at once the most personal and the most elemental. James drew on the memory of a beloved cousin who died young to create one of the three central characters, Milly Theale, an heiress with a short time to live and a passion for experiencing life to its fullest. To the creation of the other two, Merton Densher and the magnificent, predatory Kate Croy, who conspire in an act of deceit and betrayal, he brought a lifetime's distilled wisdom about the frailty of the human soul when it is trapped in the depths of need and desire. And he brought to the drama that unites these three characters, in the drawing rooms of London and on the storm-lit piazzas of Venice, a starkness and classical purity almost unprecedented in his work. Under its brilliant, coruscating surfaces, beyond the scrim of its marvelous rhetorical and psychological devices, The Wings of the Dove offers an unfettered vision of our civilization and its discontents. It represents a culmination of James's art and, as such, of the art of the novel itself.

From the Hardcover edition.

亨利·詹姆斯（Henry James），19世纪美国继霍桑、麦尔维尔之后伟大的小说家，也是美国乃至世界文学史上的大文豪。著有长篇小说：《一个美国人》《一位女士的画像》《鸽翼》《使节》《金碗》等。他的创作对20世纪崛起的现代派及后现代派文学有着非常巨大的影响，是心理分析小说的开创者之一，是20世纪小说的意识流写作技巧的先驱。

萧绪津，1942年8月出生于天津，祖籍奉化。1965年9月进入教育系统工作，先后在宁波市职工业余学校、宁波市第十二中学、宁波市师范学校和宁波中学担任英语教师。2002年10月退休。中学高级教师。