The Wings of the Dove

Henry James (1843-1916) was a British-American author whose works often focus on the social relationships between “old money” Europeans and “new money” Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries. Although his works are not strictly biographical, they are based on his own experiences. James was born into an incredibly wealthy “new money” family in New York City. He spent his childhood travelling between the United States and Europe. In 1875, he moved to Paris and spent the majority of the rest of his life in Europe. He became a British subject shortly before his death in 1916. James used his experiences as a new money “arriviste” within the high cultural circles of the continental European and British elite to write dense, layered novels that explore the cultural and class tensions between these groups. Some of his best-known works that draw from these experiences are The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The American (1877), and The Ambassadors (1903). The Wings of the Dove similarly explores the dynamics between the wealthy American heiress Milly Theale and the British aristocracy and ambitious upper-middle classes as they seek to take advantage of her innocence and wealth.

The character of Milly is loosely based on James’s cousin Minny Temple, who died at the age of 25 of tuberculosis.