SOURCE: "Daisy Miller, Backward into the Past," in Henry James Review, Vol. 1, No. 2, Winter, 1980, pp. 164-78.

Hocks is an American author and educator who has written extensively on Henry James. In the following essay, he examines Daisy Miller from the perspective of one hundred years of criticism. Highlighting developments in critical perspective and revisions in James's thoughts on the novel, he explores the characters of Daisy and Winterbourne and the thematic issues that they raise.

Here you have the work of a great psychologist, who has the imagination of a poet, the wit of a keen humorist, the conscience of an impeccable moralist, the temperament of a philosopher, and the wisdom of a rarely experienced witness of the world.

—W. D. Howells on Henry James

1. the Present

Although there is a lingering untrue truism that, with the publication in 1878 of Daisy Miler, James "invented the international novel," what...