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Note: this article also contains information about the films based upon the book.

Daddy Long-Legs is a 1912 novel by an American writer Jean Webster. It follows the protagonist, a young girl named Jerusha "Judy" Abbott, through her college years. She writes the letters to her benefactor, a rich man whom she has never seen.

Jerusha Abbott was brought up at the John Grier Home, an old-fashioned orphanage. The children were wholly dependent on charity. They were badly fed and had to wear other people's cast-off clothes. Jerusha's unusual name was selected by the headmistress off a grave stone. Her surname was selected out of the phone book. At the age of 18, she has finished her education and is at loose ends, still working in the dormitories at the institution where she was brought up.

When the asylum's trustees make their monthly visit, Jerusha is informed by the asylum's dour headmistress that one of the trustees has offered to pay her way through college. He has spoken to her former teachers and knows that she is an excellent writer. He will pay her tuition and also give her a generous monthly allowance. Jerusha must write him a monthly letter, because he believes that letter-writing is important to the development of a writer. However, she will never know his identity, and he will never reply.

Jerusha catches a glimpse of the shadow of her benefactor from the back, and knows he is a tall long-legged man. Because of this, she jokingly calls him Daddy Long-Legs. She attends a "girls' college," but the name and location are never identified. Men from Princeton University are frequently mentioned as dates, so it might be assumed that her college is one of the Seven Sisters. It was certainly on the East Coast. She illustrates her letters with childlike line drawings, also created by Jean Webster.

The book chronicles Jerusha's educational, personal, and social growth. One of the first things she does at college is to change her name to "Judy." She designs a rigorous reading program for herself and struggles to gain the basic cultural knowledge to which she, growing up in the bleak environment of the orphan asylum, was never exposed.

At the end of the book, of course, the identity of 'Daddy Long-Legs' is revealed.

The book is dedicated "To You." Today this book is often classified as young adult literature or even children’s literature, but at the time it was part of a trend of "girl" or "college girl" books which featured young female protagonists dealing with post-high-school concerns such as college, career, and marriage. These books predated the contemporary view of adolescence. Other authors who wrote in this vein include L. M. Montgomery, Louisa May Alcott, and later, Mary Stoltz.

The themes of this book reflect Jean Webster's interests in social work and women's suffrage. This book was her best-known work and was made into a stage play; 1919 (starring Mary Pickford), 1931 (starring Janet Gaynor and Warner Baxter), and 1955 films; and an anime serial. The 1955 film, Daddy Long Legs, starred Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron, though it departed significantly from the original storyline.

In Japan, Daddy-Long-Legs was made into a musical anime TV special in 1979 by Tatsunoko Productions, directed by Masakazu Higuchi of Superbook fame. It is currently being fansubbed by C1 Anime. This was followed in 1990 by the TV serial Watashi no Ashinaga Ojisan (My Daddy-Long-Legs), directed by Kazuyoshi Yokota for the Nippon Animation studio as that year's installment of the studio's World Masterpiece Theater. The Tatsunoko TV special was released, dubbed in English, on home video in the United States.

• Daddy-Long-Legs, available at Project Gutenberg.
• Public domain audio recording of Daddy-Long-Legs