Henry James for Venice

Toibin shows that his own method of merging the deeply personal with the imagined belongs to the main method by which novelists and James work. The importance of the years 1895 to 1900 is that Henry James was building up the images and figures that would constitute his three masterpieces: The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl. Small moments, recurring memories, a sudden realization, something half understood, random matters, all of these can make their way into the foreground or background of a novel.