SOURCE: An introduction to Daisy Miller: A Study, The Heritage Press, 1969, pp. v-xvi.

Holloway is an English author and educator. In the following essay, he discusses the evolution of theme in Daisy Miller, claiming that the novella dramatizes "the fate of innocence in a devious and sophisticated world," but agrees with James in the assessment that the story is more a poetic than a critical study of Daisy's character.

It is nearly a century since Daisy Miller was published by Leslie Stephen in The Cornhill Magazine of 1878, and today it is strange to seek out, on the reserve shelves of some big library, the dusty Cornhill volumes for those years, and to find, on their yellowing pages and among their heavy black Victorian illustrations, James's spirited and incisive allegro. But his nouvelle caught the spirit of that time: its preoccupations were not James's alone. If Daisy Miller depicts...