Daisy Miller

Henry James was born in New York, New York, in 1843. Throughout his life, he often straddled the boundaries of geographical places, social changes, and even sexual identity. This ambiguity and “both/and” nature of James’s life gave him unique authority to illustrate the themes in Daisy Miller.

While James was born in New York, he and his well-known and wealthy family spent a lot of time in the intellectual social circles of Massachusetts and traveled often to Europe. His father encouraged his children to pursue higher education and travel widely. Like Winterbourne in Daisy Miller, Henry James spent much of his formative years and early education in Europe; he and his brother, William, also studied at Harvard, his brother becoming known as the “Father of American Psychology.” James’s knowledge of upper-class American society, as well as European sensibilities and the conflicts that can arise when the two collide, appear in the writing of Daisy Miller. James eventually spent so much time in England that he became a British citizen in 1915, the year before he died. A citizen of both countries, James was neither wholly American nor English.

Though James and his family were certainly wealthy and well-known, like

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