After being initially rejected by an American publisher, the novel was originally published as
Daisy Miller: A Study in two parts by a British periodical, the
Cornhill Magazine, in the summer of 1878. The story proved to be immediately popular. Because James failed to secure the American rights to the work right away,
Daisy Miller was pirated by periodicals in Boston (
Living Age) and New York (
Home Journal) that same summer. An authorized American edition was finally put out that fall by Harper's, which also sold well. Over the years,
Daisy Miller was republished several times in book form, with James making a number of alterations and revisions each time. The author made major revisions with the so-called New York Edition, published by Scribners in 1907–1909, which is the text used for the discussion here.
Though social mores and attitudes have changed significantly since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Daisy Miller continues to be a popular and relevant story. Filtered through the conflicted perspective of Frederick Winterbourne, an American expatriate who lives in Geneva, Switzerland, James describes the last months of the socially naive, essentially innocent Daisy Miller.
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