Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Vernon Lee
-
Standard Name: Lee, Vernon
Birth Name: Violet Paget
Pseudonym: Vernon Lee
VL
's writing career spanned more than five decades during the later the nineteenth century and the earlier twentieth. She wrote critical monographs, essays, and reviews (on aesthetics, politics, and history), as well as short stories, novels, and drama. Much of her work is currently out of print. However two books published in 2003 mark a renewed interest in Lee's life's work: Vernon Lee: A Literary Biography by Vineta Colby
, and Vernon Lee: Aesthetics, History, and the Victorian Female Intellectual by Christa Zorn
.
AL
addressed letters and love-poems to the writer Vernon Lee
, whom she had met that spring in Florence, and for whom she cherished an unrequited love.
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press.
She presents herself here explicitly as an urban poet, like the London plane tree, a human-made hybrid. The version printed here of New Love, New Life (originally titled in German and addressed to Vernon Lee
politics
Constance Lytton
CL
was conscious of gender issues long before she became a supporter of the women's movement or a suffragist. In 1893 she described herself as so giddy with anger against several groups of her own...
Friends, Associates
Lady Ottoline Morrell
Another source of her aesthetic tastes was her acquaintance with writer and critic Vernon Lee
(Violet Paget), who also encouraged the appreciation of eighteenth-century Italian design.
Seymour, Miranda. Ottoline Morrell: Life on the Grand Scale. Farrar Straus Giroux.
53-4
politics
Lady Ottoline Morrell
She became an activist for pacifism, a movement in which she played many roles. She joined the Union for Democratic Control
, whose meetings were soon being held at her home (and whose members included...
She did not, however, have enough money. Oscar Wilde
took it upon himself to organize a fundraising drive to discharge her unpaid bill at the Langham Hotel
. As late as June, Vernon Lee
reported...
Vernon Lee
, likely in love with AMFR
herself, suffered a breakdown when her friend's engagement to Darmesteter
was announced, and after this she never fully regained her health. The two friends, however, remained in...
Residence
A. Mary F. Robinson
After marrying Duclaux, she lived with him near Olmet, a tiny hill village in Cantal, a mountainous sub-region of the Auvergne in France. Her old friend Vernon Lee
spent six weeks with them...
Dedications
A. Mary F. Robinson
Several of these poems are addressed to her friend Vernon Lee
.
Leighton, Angela, and Margaret Reynolds, editors. Victorian Women Poets: An Anthology. Blackwell.
538
Literary Setting
A. Mary F. Robinson
The Red Clove, set in Italy, is dedicated to Vernon Lee
,, while Two Sisters, a memory of childhood, addresses Robinson's sister Mabel
. Several poems draw heavily on the world of...
Textual Features
A. Mary F. Robinson
She dedicates A Ballad of Forgotten Tunes to Vernon Lee
, and addresses her by name in its closing stanza. She parodies the style of Pope
in Celia's Homecoming, written for her sister Mabel
Textual Features
A. Mary F. Robinson
Our Lady of the Broken Heart, the garden play mentioned in the volume title, is set in a public Italian garden during the seventeenth century, or any time.
Robinson, A. Mary F. Songs, Ballads, and a Garden Play. T. Fisher Unwin.
