Vernon Lee

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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 .
  • BirthName: Violet Paget
  • Pseudonym: Vernon Lee
    VL began to use her pseudonym in her teens, believing that no one would read her seriously if they knew she was a woman. In her personal life she often shifted between her given and adopted names.
    Colby, Vineta. Vernon Lee: A Literary Biography. University of Virginia Press, 2003.
    2

Head-and-shoulders portrait sketch of Vernon Lee by John Singer Sargent, done in a single three-hour sitting, 1881. Her hair is short and dark; she wears a black sweater over a white shirt, and wire-rimmed spectacles. Tate Gallery.

Milestones

14 October 1856

Violet Paget (later VL ) was born at the St Léonard chateau near Boulogne-sur-Mer in France.
Gunn, Peter. Vernon Lee: Violet Paget, 1856-1935. Oxford University Press, 1964.
11

May-July 1870

Violet Paget (later VL ) reached print at the age of thirteen: her short storyLes aventures d'une pièce de monnaie was serialized in the Swiss magazine La Famille.
Mannocchi, Phyllis. “’Vernon Lee’: A Reintroduction and Primary Bibliography”. English Literature in Transition, Vol.
26
, No. 4, 1983, pp. 231-67.
250

By 10 November 1932

VL published Music and Its Lovers, An EmpiricalStudy of Emotional and Imaginative Responses to Music, a critical work that was the last text she published during her lifetime.
TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012]. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-literary-supplement-historical-archive.
1606 (11 November 1932): 831
Mannocchi, Phyllis. “’Vernon Lee’: A Reintroduction and Primary Bibliography”. English Literature in Transition, Vol.
26
, No. 4, 1983, pp. 231-67.
247

13 February 1935

VL died of heart disease at her home, Il Palmerino, just outside Florence.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Family

14 October 1856

Violet Paget (later VL ) was born at the St Léonard chateau near Boulogne-sur-Mer in France.
Gunn, Peter. Vernon Lee: Violet Paget, 1856-1935. Oxford University Press, 1964.
11

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