SOURCE: "The 'Shy Incongruous Charm' of 'Daisy Miller'," in Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 10, No. 2, September, 1955, pp. 162-65.

McElderry was an American educator and critic whose studies focus predominantly on the works of such American realists as Mark Twain, Henry James, and Thomas Wolfe. In the following essay, McElderry reveals James' intention of portraying Daisy as innocent by quoting a letter he wrote on the subject soon after the publication of his novella

The best-known comment by Henry James on his story Daisy Miller is found in two long paragraphs at the beginning of his "Preface" to volume XVIII of the New York Edition. Written nearly thirty years after the original publication, the account is not very illuminating. James tells the anecdote on which he based him story, and explains that it was published in Cornhill after being rejected by a Philadelphia magazine. "Flatness indeed," he continues, "one must have...