I Thought of Daisy

Originally published in 1929, this is the first of three novels by Edmund Wilson, written whilst balancing his ambitions as a novelist against a career in literary criticism. The two tie together here in a depiction of a young man struggling to find his American ideal in a young chorus girl.

Originally published in 1929, I Thought of Daisy is the first of three novels by Edmund Wilson. Written while he was still balancing his ambitions as a novelist against a successful career in literary criticism, I Thought of Daisy marries Wilson's two vocations to create an unusual and revealing work of fiction. Daisy depicts the inner struggle of a young man who forsakes the bohemian world of Greenwich Village to seek his American ideal in the person of a chorus girl. Set in the 1920s, a vital period in Wilson's life, the novel is crowded with recognizable characters drawn from his contemporaries, particularly his colleague John Dos Passos and his lover Edna St. Vincent Millay. The preface and afterword by Neale Reinitz, editor of Edmund Wilson's posthumously published novel The Higher Jazz (Iowa, 1998), set the novel in the context of Wilson's development as a writer of fiction.