-
Seasonal Offer:
This title is part of our Seasonal Offers promotion.
The Wings of the Dove (Classics)
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Wings of the Dove (Oxford World's Classics) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Authors
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
Product Description
Review
“Prunella Scales’s cultivated tones are well matched to the cadences of Jamesian language. In some of his scenes of satrirical observation her delivery of dialogue cleverly highlights a gentle but piercing wit.”
Herald 19/3/98
“”Listeners are likely to be drawn into the novel and rewarded for having chosen the aural route as opposed to the more arduous, printed path. James’s dense style is leavened when read aloud. This makes the descriptive passages more evocative and the dialogue more active and convincing.”
Observer 8/2/98
Product Description
Confronting a Bronzino portrait in an English country house, a young American heiress comes face to face with her own predicament. For Milly Theale, who seems to have the world before her and at her feet, is fatally ill. Eager for life, eager for love, she embarks on her European adventure, warming to the admiration of her new friends Kate Croy and Merton Densher. But Merton and Kate are secretly engaged, and come to see in this angel with a thumping bank account as a solution to their own problems. For the remarkable Kate, scheming, passionate, poetic, also wants to live...
This edition of James's poignant and dramatic novel is based on the revised New York Edition. The cover pictures the Bronzino portrait which is the focus of the key scene in the book.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
This edition of James's poignant and dramatic novel is based on the revised New York Edition. The cover pictures the Bronzino portrait which is the focus of the key scene in the book.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Make no mistake: this is a major novel. It will take everything you've got and then some to get through it. The plotline is simple: who gets to take advantage of a rich dying girl before the others do? But the novel is not about its plot; it's about its language. And what language! It's like trying to swim upstream against prose badly translated out of a dead tongue. Sentences perpetually delaying conclusions and meanings put the reader in the same position as the characters: trapped in amber struggling to get free from their situations. The prose style becomes an affectation one gets past; it's no harder than adjusting to Shakespeare, and easier than Joyce. The language is the true hero of the book, for there's no one else suitable for the position (Milly seems more object than subject as the novel progresses, and is removed for the last third). The chief interest consists largely of what James is going to do next--which viewpoint to take? which episode to develop? All this said, the book does have punch at the end, as characters play their hands and admit to one another and themselves what they won't do.
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
I love Henry James' work, but getting through it is a trial of endurance. Don't try this if you are coming to his work for the first time. Try something shorter like "The Turn of the Screw" which is superb. This is also superb, but is so dense that the language and style takes enormous concentration in order to do the novel full justice. As usual with James' it is not the most cheerful of subject matters and centres around his preoccupation with American naivete struggling to survive in worldly Europe, but it is wonderfully tragic and has some gorgeous characters in it. For the same type of thing on the other side of the ocean try Edith Wharton.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
In my humble opinion, this is James' best work. It surpasses even "The Ambassadors" and "The Golden Bowl" as well as his more often read, not to say more ubiquitous (since lousy movies from Hollywood seem to have revived interest in the author in a manner he would have found distinctly distasteful), earlier masterpieces, short and long. Shame on The Library of America for stalling out on its republication of James' work before getting to the late achievements. Here is one vote for completion of the canon in the usual estimable LOA volumes.
This is a novel to be savoured and treasured. If you're up to late James (he wrote ghost stories, but he's no Stephen King), read on without hesitation.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
A long haul
As other reviewers have pointed out, this is not the easiest read. The language is certainly of its age and it took me some time to get used to it. Read more
Published on 3 Sep 2009 by G. Hill
Slow and painful - but very atmospheric
While reading this I repeatedly told people I was "bogged down" in Henry James which is, I think how many people would find this novel. Read more
Published on 21 Aug 2007 by J. Draper
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
