"beauty and dignity of art." But as he also said in the preface to the New York Edition text of the novel, James had to prepare the situation that was to occupy Milly for the last months of her life. He established the background of Kate and Densher's inability to marry because of a lack of money.

Literary significance and criticism
The Wings of the Dove has one of the strongest critical positions of any of James' works, although James himself sometimes expressed dissatisfaction with it. In his preface to the New York Edition, James spent much time confessing to supposed faults in the novel: defective structure, characters not as well presented as they could be, and a general failure to realise his initial plan for the book.

By and large,Ranging from Empiricism to Postcolonialism, Marxism to the Ethnohistorians, each chapter begins with an introduction to the particular school, the main protagonists, the critics, and is followed by a useful section of further readings. From the classic, such as G. R. Elton's "England Under the Tudors" and E. P. Thompson's "The Making of the English Working Class," to the recent, such as Henrietta Whiteman's "White Buffalo Woman" and Judith Walkowitz's "City of Dreadful Delight," the diverse selections collected here bring together the leading historians and theorists of the century.Comprehensive and accessible to undergraduates,The Houses of Historyis ideally suited to classroom use.