SOURCE: "Fame, 1877-79," in Henry James's Apprenticeship, The Tales: 1864-1882, P. D. Meany Publishers, 1994, 133-58.

In the following essay, Martin and Ober provide a thematic and stylistic analysis of Daisy Miller.

This was the first of James's tales to be published in England, and it is his first nouvelle, perhaps his favourite form: in the Preface to The Lesson of the Master he waxes lyrical about "the beautiful and blest nouvelle." Among the many merits of the tale is its architectonic structure. None of the scenes is set in Geneva, but Winterbourne, the central intelligence, studies there, and its presence is powerfully felt throughout as a citadel of European protocol, though this is enforced, ironically enough, by none more strictly than the expatriate Americans: social proprieties and forms of courtship are "stiff," which is a nodal term, and Geneva is of course spectrally presided over by the figure...