Before You Begin

Before you begin.

At a hotel above Lake Geneva, Daisy Miller makes friends as easily as she makes plans. Her frank manner delights Frederick Winterbourne, an American who has spent years in Europe, while his aunt and other expatriates measure every encounter against their own rules of respectability. A proposed visit to the old castle at Chillon carries Daisy and Winterbourne from polite conversation toward a difference neither can easily explain.

Henry James published Daisy Miller: A Study in 1879. The novella moves from the lakefront at Vevey to the winter society of Rome, observing the pauses, glances and gossip through which people interpret one another. Its social comedy turns a question of manners into a study of the distance between what a person does and what others decide it means.

This illustrated edition follows the complete text through ten reading units. Its downloadable EPUB and PDF contain four principal-character Profiles, three World plates and three full-page Scenes. In the LitLab reader, the full gallery adds the wider cast, character Studies, Story Medallions, chapter recaps and further views of the places Daisy visits. Begin in Vevey and watch how a meeting by the lake changes in the eyes of everyone around it.