Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time Set amid the splendor of London drawing rooms and gilded Venetian palazzos The Wings of the Dove is the story of Milly Theale a naïve doomed American heiress and a pair of lovers Kate Croy and Merton Densher who conspire to obtain her fortune. In this witty tragedy of treachery self-deception and betrayal Henry James weaves together three ill-fated and wholly human destinies unexpectedly linked by desire greed and salvation. As Amy Bloom writes in her Introduction “The Wings of the Dove is a novel of intimacy. . . . [James] gives us passion he gives us love in its terrible and enchanting forms.”
