"'The Portrait of a Lady' was, like 'Roderick Hudson,' begun in Florence, during three months spent there in the spring of 1879.  Like 'Roderick' and like 'The American,' it had been designed for publication in 'The Atlantic Monthly,' where it began to appear in 1880" (XXV).  This is the manner which James chose to introduce the material circumstances as well as the creative process involved in the composition of one of his most elaborated literary portraits.

    Commenting on the period it took him to write his work, the auhtor states: "It is a long  novel, and I was long in writing it; I remember being again much occupied with it, the following year, during  a stay of several weeks made in Venice.  I had rooms on Riva Schiavoni, at the top of a house near the passage leading off to San Zaccaria; the waterside life, the wondrous lagoon spread before me, and the ceaseless human chatter of Venice came at my windows, to which I seem to myself to have been constantly driven, in the fruitless fidget of composition , as if to see whether, out in the blue channel, the ship of some right suggestion, of some better phrase, of the next happy twist of my subject , the next true touch for my canvas, mightn't come into sight" (XXV).
 
 

The Grand Canal, Venice

"But I recall vividly enough that the response most elicited, in general, to these restless appeals was the rather grim admonition that romantic and historic sites, such as the land of Italy abounds in, offer the artist a questionable aid to concentration when they themselves are not to be the subject of it" (XXV).  As these reflexions imply, the  composition process will prove to be not only arduous, but also extremely challenging as the author attempts to capture the essence of the young woman affronting her destiny.