Daisy Miller: A Study

Daisy Miller, A Study is a novella by Henry James, first published in Cornhill Magazine in 1878 and then in book form in 1879. It was the first of his books to reach a wide audience, and it remains the single most famous of his shorter fictions. The subtitle, A Study, indicates how James thought of the book at the time he wrote it, as a piece of careful observation rather than a fully resolved drama.

Daisy Miller is a young American woman from upstate New York, traveling in Europe with her mother and younger brother. Frederick Winterbourne, an expatriate American who has lived in Geneva since childhood, meets her at a hotel in Vevey on Lake Geneva. He is fascinated by her openness and her apparent indifference to the rules of European respectability that govern young women of his own social circle. The acquaintance continues in Rome a few months later, where Daisy’s behaviour, particularly her unchaperoned walks with an Italian named Giovanelli, scandalises the expatriate American community. Winterbourne watches the situation unfold with a mixture of attraction, perplexity, and slow growing judgment.

The book turns on the question of whether Daisy is genuinely innocent or genuinely indifferent to convention. James leaves the question deliberately unresolved. Winterbourne keeps trying to decide and keeps getting it wrong. The famous final scene in the Colosseum at night, where Daisy contracts the malaria that will kill her, gives the story its tragic resolution while keeping the central interpretive question open.

The novella runs about a hundred pages and was widely read in both America and Britain. It became something of a controversy in its time. Many American readers felt James had unfairly mocked the American girl. Many European readers thought he had been too sympathetic. The mixed reception was a small early version of the larger debate about James’s relationship to both his countries that has continued ever since. For readers new to James, this is the most reliable place to begin. It pairs naturally with An International Episode and The Reverberator, his other middle length pieces on the same subject.