Daisy Miller The complete text of the original edition

"Daisy Miller" was an immediate and widespread popular success for James, despite some overheated criticism that the story was "an outrage on American girlhood".

This story serves as both a psychological description of the mind of a young woman, and an analysis of the traditional views of a society where she is a clear outsider. Henry James uses Daisy's story to discuss what he thinks Europeans and Americans believe about each other, and more generally the prejudices common in any culture. In a letter James said that Daisy is the victim of a "social rumpus" that goes on either over her head or beneath her notice.