Daisy Miller (with an Introduction by Martin W. Sampson)

By Henry James

First published in “Cornhill Magazine” in 1878, “Daisy Miller” is Henry James’ novella which concerns the courtship of its titular character, the beautiful young American girl Daisy Miller. While travelling in Europe with her family, Daisy is taken by the delightfulness of the continent, which unlike her brother, she finds superior to their hometown of Schenectady, New York. Her brother introduces her to Frederick Winterbourne, whom she agrees to visit the Château de Chillon with, drawing the disapproval of her family. Daisy further rejects the social conventions of the American expatriate community as she becomes increasingly intimate with Giovanelli, a young Italian of a lower class. Through the portrayal of Daisy, James seeks to contrast the differing attitudes of Europeans and Americans at the end of the 19th century, a theme he would revisit throughout his literary career. “Daisy Miller” was Henry James’ first real literary success, one which would bring him immediate and widespread popularity, and which remains to this day as one of his most popular works. This edition includes an introduction by Martin W. Sampson and a biographical afterword.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digireads.com Publishing
• Release date: Apr 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781420957303

Henry James

Henry James (1843-1916) was an American author of novels, short stories, plays, and non-fiction. He spent most of his life in Europe, and much of his work regards the interactions and complexities between American and European characters. Among his works in this vein are The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Bostonians (1886), and The Ambassadors (1903). Through his influence, James ushered in the era of American realism in literature. In his lifetime he wrote 12 plays, 112 short stories, 20 novels, and many travel and critical works. He was nominated three times for the Noble Prize in Literature.

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DAISY MILLER

By HENRY JAMES

Introduction by MARTIN W. SAMPSON

Daisy Miller

By Henry James

Introduction by Martin W. Sampson

Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5729-7

eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5730-3

This edition copyright © 2018. Digireads.com Publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Cover Image: a detail of The Chateau de Chillon, 1875 (oil on canvas), Gustave Courbet (1819-77) / Musee Municipal, Lons-le-Saulnier, France / Bridgeman Images.

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Part I

Part II

Biographical Afterword

Introduction

It is assuredly one of the natural ironies that fate distributes so plentifully among claimants of literary fame, that Henry James, who pleased not the million, and who stood as master of the prolonged and intricate windings of the human soul, should be best known by one of his least subtle achievements, by one of the simplest of his dramatis personae, by one of his briefest presentments of personality. It is, of course, nothing amazing that the lot should so fall: fate seems to have more common sense than sense of art; and why should not the general reader turn to something simple rather than to something portentous, to something handily brief rather than to something exhaustive to the last degree?

Natural enough, indeed, but the ironic fact remains that those who read the little masterpiece that comes first in this volume will not have entered into the author’s intimacy, any more than one who is pleased by an ingenious after-dinner speaker knows what the speaker really has as his preoccupation. Or to draw a figure from the profession to which Henry James once made half-hearted advances, we have in this story an obiter dictum, of a keen-witted observant judge, and not a massive, reasoned legal decision. It is Henry James all but off duty.

Another point about the popularity—or better, the vogue—of Daisy Miller, a point to mention perforce and then perforce to drop. That vogue was immediate for a reason now obsolete. To us of today the little work stands on its own feet; by the reading public of the time of its appearance it was, curiously enough, resentfully regarded as a downright challenge to American young-womanhood. Was this outspoken, happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care young beauty a rare accident, or a fixed phenomenon? Was this really the way, when at last we got to Europe, our daughters impressed the foreigners? Was Daisy Miller, in short, actually a typical American girl? With all their heated debate our parents did not settle that question; even our grandparents failed to settle it. It depended on so much, it depended on what you yourself had been used to, it depended on your revelatory social standards, whether you felt like Mrs. Costello, or like Mrs. Miller, in regard to this bit of undoubted piquancy. Mark that no one questioned Daisy’s utter reality. There she stood, the breath of life in her. It was only, as it were, a question of how many there were like her, only a question whether the author had basely betrayed to the world the family secret of his own nation, or whether the secret was so large and open that it was past betraying, or, indeed, whether the secret was so insignificant that it never should have been honored with words.

Obsolete, all this, and strangely old-fashioned to be worried over the interpretation of a provincial girl who dispensed with a metropolitan chaperone. But once again, the ironic fact remains that the felicitous combination of a few deft strokes set all cultivated Americans into a fever of discussion, and the mere words, Daisy Miller, dropped into a parlor, released lingual inhibitions then as the pentecostal term, prohibition, did yesterday or does today. Sides were taken vivaciously and ardently—it was a happy day for hostesses. Even as I write, I remember wondering, as a small boy, what in the world a decorous middle-aged feminine collateral meant when she murmured with bated breath as her share of the controversy, "‘And the most innocent’—oh surely!" What was it all about, this nine days’ wonder of nine days long since past? Only a nice girl who shocked the dear delightful tabbies by being nice—and innocent, oh surely!—in her own artless way. It is a pity to keep you from such a story while the introduction performs its sober task.

Henry James, far and away the greatest American novelist, son of Henry James the philosophical theologian, and brother of William James the psychologist and philosopher, was born in New York City, April 15, 1843. His schooling was partly in New York and Newport and partly in London, Paris, Geneva, and Bonn. After trying a law course at Harvard, he turned to literature and wrote reviews and minor articles and stories. European trips came often, especially often for those days, and he adventured into the longer forms of fiction. After publishing in 1875 his first important novel, Roderick Hudson, he made his sixth visit to Europe with the resolution to make Europe his home. A year or so of Paris was followed by permanent English residence. The last illnesses of his parents in 1881-2 brought him back to America for temporary visits, and in 1904-5 and in 1910-11 he was again in this country. Until 1897 his home was London, thereafter Rye. Journeys to the continent were not infrequent. He learned to know France and Italy but did not extend his tours to the other continental countries, save to that thoroughfare, Switzerland. Novels and stories of increasingly great significance were coming from his pen, although for a few years, without success, he experimented with the dramatic form. The history of his life is mainly the history of his artistic career. He never married, and save toward the end of his life he did not come into public notice other than as author and occasional lecturer. In 1915, as a proof of his ardent sympathies with the Allies, he became a British subject, an honest gesture which the press made ostentatious. The New Year’s honors of 1916 bestowed on him the Order of Merit. On February 28, 1916 he died.

The list of his novels is imposing to those to whom they are more than names, and hardly less important is his contribution in the form of the short story and the novelette. To those to whom they are more than names— for it is a commonplace to say that James was not in his lifetime, and has not been since, appreciated by the general public at his true worth. This is not the place to enlarge on the reasons which make his work so impressive a part of the art of modern fiction. I proceed to the tabulation of his more significant achievements, omitting, as it happens, many titles of high interest.

In 1875 appeared Roderick Hudson, a story of the manifestations of an artistic temperament; in 1877, The American, the conflict of a fine sort of Americanism with an unfine sort of Bourbon arrogance; in 1878, The Europeans, and Daisy Miller; in 1879, a biography of Hawthorne; in 1881, The Portrait of a Lady, with which remarkable novel the author comes into his real stride; in 1885, A Little Tour in France, descriptive sketches of towns; in 1885-6, The Bostonians, omitted, like The Europeans, from the definitive edition; in 1886, The Princess Casamassima, the author’s excursion into a social territory unlike his usual field, which is preeminently that of the world of ladies and gentlemen; in 1888, The Aspern Papers, a novelette based on the life of Byron’s Claire Clairmont, and Partial Portraits, mainly studies of novelists; in 1889-90,