A rich American art-collector and his daughter Maggie buy in for themselves and to their greater glory a beautiful young wife and a noble husband. They do not know that Charlotte and Prince Amerigo were formerly lovers, nor that on the eve of the Prince's marriage they had discovered, in a Bloomsbury antique shop, a golden bowl with a secret flaw. When the golden bowl is broken, Maggie must leave the security of her childhood and try to reassemble the pieces of her shattered happiness. In this, the last of his three great poetic masterpieces, James combined with a dazzling virtuosity elements of social comedy, of mystery, terror, and myth. The Golden Bowl is the most controversial, ambiguous, and sophisticated of James's novels.