[JAMES, HENRY]. Daisy Miller: A Study. New York: Harper & Brothers, n.d. [c.1879].
Hardcover. First edition, later printing. Leather-bound. Small format, 32mo, (120 x 80mm.), pp. 116. Rebound in near contemporary full calf by Hawes of Cambridge, England. Gilt titles and tooling, smooth spine. All page edges gilt. Marbled endpapers. Bound without adds. Copyright page states 1878. Provenance: Sir Frederick Macmillan's bookplate to front pastedown. Condition: GOOD. Binding tight and secure with some wear to covers and extremities, the spine ends rubbed. Contents crisp and clean. Lacking all advertisements. Scarce.
Notes: First edition, later printing. Issued as part of Harper's Half-Hour Series and now one of James's scarcest titles. This issue precedes the first UK edition, with copyright date of 1878 at copyright page, no date at title page and unfortunately bound without the adds preceding the title-page and at rear. This present copy is a very early printing and was owned by the famous publisher Frederick Orridge Macmillan, his armorial bookplate adorns the front pastedown, this with a date of 1879. A very nice unsophisticated crisp example of this very fragile and scarce book. "[Daisy Miller] deals with an unsophisticated, 'strikingly, admirably pretty' girl from Schenectady traveling through Europe who runs athwart the conventions of a group of Europeanized Americans who enforce the rules of the older European community with unthinking severity. The book aroused controversy when it first appeared, some reviewers taking it as a libel on American manners, but it later became one of the most popular of James's writings." (Benét's 247) BAL 10538. Benet's 247.
