Daisy Miller

Daisy Miller: A Study is a novella by the American writer Henry James, first published in the Cornhill Magazine in June and July 1878 and in book form the following year.

The story is told through Winterbourne, an American who has lived in Europe long enough to have adopted its manners, and who becomes interested in Daisy Miller, a young woman travelling with her mother and her brother. Daisy does as she likes: she goes about unchaperoned, is friendly with an Italian who is not a gentleman by the standards of the expatriate community, and refuses to take the hints that are offered to her. Winterbourne cannot settle on whether she is unaware of the rules or indifferent to them, and the other Americans in Switzerland and Italy have already decided, which is what makes the novella a study of a verdict rather than a courtship. The story made James's reputation, and the character of the young woman who fails to notice what society requires of her became one of the standard figures of his fiction.

James had moved to Europe a few years earlier and wrote repeatedly about Americans abroad, and this short book is the one that established the subject in his name.