Daisy Miller: A Study

by Henry James

Category: Fiction

Status: Available

Source: Public Domain — Project Gutenberg

About This Book

"Daisy Miller: A Study" by Henry James is a novella published in 1878. It follows the beautiful American Daisy Miller as she captivates Frederick Winterbourne, a sophisticated expatriate, during their encounters in Switzerland and Italy. Her free-spirited flirtatiousness clashes with rigid European social conventions, scandalizing the American expatriate community. As Daisy grows closer to a questionable Italian suitor, Winterbourne struggles between his attraction to her and society's disapproval. The story explores cultural prejudices and asks whether Daisy's unconventional behavior reflects innocent American spontaneity or something more troubling. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

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Produced by Judith Boss

DAISY MILLER: A STUDY

IN TWO PARTS

The text is that of the first American appearance in book form, 1879.

PART I

At the little town of Vevey, in Switzerland, there is a particularly comfortable hotel. There are, indeed, many hotels, for the entertainment of tourists is the business of the place, which, as many travelers will remember, is seated upon the edge of a remarkably blue lake--a lake that it behooves every tourist to visit. The shore of the lake presents an unbroken array of establishments of this order, of every category, from the “grand hotel” of the newest fashion, with a chalk-white front, a hundred balconies, and a dozen flags flying from its roof, to the little Swiss pension of an elder day, with its name inscribe

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About This Edition

This edition of Daisy Miller: A Study by Henry James is catalogued on Libreya under Fiction and runs approximately 21,322 words — about 107 minutes of reading at an average pace. It is sourced from Project Gutenberg, the world's oldest digital library of public domain literature, founded in 1971 by Michael Hart, and every text on Libreya has been verified to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. You can view the original Project Gutenberg edition here.

On Libreya, the text has been carefully formatted for comfortable reading on any screen — with consistent chapter navigation, adjustable font sizes, and four reading themes: light, sepia, dark, and night mode. Your reading position is saved automatically when you sign in, so you can pick up exactly where you left off across any device. The original text has not been altered in any way; what you read here is the same work as it appeared in its original published form.

About Classic Fiction

Classic fiction represents the highest achievements of literary imagination. The novels in this genre have shaped how generations of readers understand human nature, society, and the fundamental questions of existence. Reading 19th and early 20th-century novels offers far more than historical interest: these stories explore love, ambition, morality, and identity with an insight that remains startlingly relevant today. Authors like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Austen, Hardy, and Dickens wrote for readers much like us — people trying to make sense of a complicated world — and their observations on class, relationships, power, and conscience carry across centuries with barely diminished force. Classic fiction is also where the novel as an art form reached some of its greatest heights: innovative narrative structures, deeply realized characters, and prose styles that reward slow, attentive reading. These are not museum pieces. They are living works that continue to be discussed, adapted, and argued over because they capture something essential and enduring about human experience.