07/09/2026
Join us at Lamb House to discover a unique Book of the Month, inspired by the house's rich history and refreshed every month.
September's Book of the Month: Daisy Miller: A Study – 1878
The beautifully crafted, novelette, Daisy Miller, quintessentially represents Henry James in both style and theme. It recounts a visit to Europe, in the company of her wealthy and anodyne mother, of the ‘strikingly and admirably pretty’ eponymous girl from Schenectady, who is one of James’s most charming and alluring portraits of ‘the American girl’. In Daisy Miller, James explores American and European social attitudes and reactions to the rapidly changing world of the late nineteenth century.
Daisy Miller’s innocence, freshness, candour, audacity, spontaneity and free-spirited naivety are beautifully contrasted with the stiffness, moral deviousness and complexity of not just the old staid European order, but of the now well-established American community living there who strive to be more European than the Europeans. This book was instrumental in establishing Henry James’s reputation on both sides of the Atlantic.
This compact American first edition was printed in New York in 1879 and is part of Henry James’s library here at Lamb House.
