Color frontispiece and black-and-white illustrations from drawings by Harry W. McVickar. "Two tales which James intended to be complementary [together in one volume]... Young Daisy Miller perplexes, amuses, and charms her stiff but susceptible fellow-American, Frederick Winterbourne. Is she innocent or corrupt? Has he lived too long in Europe to judge her properly? Amid the romantic scenery of Lake Geneva and Rome, their lively, precarious relationship develops to a climax in the Coliseum at midnight. The tale gave James his first popular success, yet some compatriots detected treachery in its portrayal of young American womanhood. James responded with "An International Episode," which exposes a couple of English gentlemen to the charm and wit of American sisters in Newport, Rhode Island and then in London. Read together, these two short masterpieces shed light on each other, demonstrating the range of James's own manners, from sharp satire and buoyant comedy to complex, perhaps even tragic, pathos."
