Fiction · 1878
Daisy Miller
A Study
Daisy Miller follows a young, wealthy American woman traveling in Europe with her indulgent mother, whose easy friendliness with men she's just met — walking alone with an Italian she barely knows, visiting the Colosseum with him by moonlight — scandalizes the expatriate American society watching her in Vevey and Rome. Winterbourne, the American who half-courts and half-judges her, can never quite decide whether Daisy is innocent or merely doesn't care what anyone thinks, and the novel doesn't entirely decide either before its ending forces the question.
Henry James published Daisy Miller: A Study in 1878; it was his first popular success, controversial enough on both sides of the Atlantic that people wrote in to argue about whether Daisy was meant to be admired or condemned, and it made "a Daisy Miller" briefly a type of American girl that everyone claimed to recognize.
Bibliomancer publishes the 1878 text exactly as Henry James wrote it.
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About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
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About the author
1843–1916 · Victorian
Henry James (1843–1916) was born in New York City, the son of a theologian and brother of the philosopher William James, and educated in Europe and America. He settled in England in 1876 and became a British subject in 1915. Among his novels are Roderick Hudson, The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Bostonians, What Maisie Knew, The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl; among his tales, Daisy Miller, The Aspern Papers and The Turn of the Screw (1898).
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