Free to read
Daisy Miller
Henry James
An independent young American travels through Europe, refusing to follow every social rule. As Winterbourne tries to understand Daisy, other people's judgments threaten to become her whole story.
- Language
- English
- Genre
- Literary fiction / Novella
- Length
- 2 chapters · About 2 hours
- First published
- 1878
- Availability
- Free
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Is this book for you?
A compact introduction to Henry James. Best for readers interested in reputation, attraction and the gap between what people see and what they assume.
Read it in English. This edition is free to add to your library.
Text source: Project Gutenberg. Source license and territorial terms.
THE OPENING PAGES
Try the first few lines.
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 inscribed in German-looking lettering upon a pink or yellow wall and an awkward summerhouse in the angle of the garden. One of the hotels at Vevey, however, is famous, even classical, being distinguished from many of its upstart neighbors by an air both of luxury and of maturity. In this region, in the month of June, American travelers are extremely numerous; it may be said, indeed, that Vevey assumes at this period some of the characteristics of an American watering place. There are sights and sounds which evoke a vision, an echo, of Newport and Saratoga. There is a flitting…Start reading this book ↗