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
.
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
Family and Intimate relationships
Mathilde Blind
MB
also had a half-brother from her mother's second marriage, Rudolph Blind
, who was an artist. Vernon Lee
pronounced him an awful little snob.
Demoor, Marysa. “Women Poets as Critics in the <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘j’>Athenæum</span>: Ungendered Anonymity Unmasked”. Nineteenth-Century Prose, Vol.
24
, No. 1, pp. 51-71.
53, 69n11
Family and Intimate relationships
A. Mary F. Robinson
AMFR
married James Darmesteter
after a brief courtship; it was said that she had proposed to him, in August 1887, shortly after their first meeting at the British Museum
.
Sources disagree on the date...
Family and Intimate relationships
A. Mary F. Robinson
AMFR
had met the poet Vernon Lee
by 1878 (a little earlier than is often supposed), the year she turned twenty-one, since her first publication includes poems addressed to Lee. They became close friends and...
Family and Intimate relationships
Amy Levy
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.
254-5, 119-21
Family and Intimate relationships
A. Mary F. Robinson
By 22 July 1882 AMFR
and Vernon Lee
were staying for a holiday at a rented cottage in Sussex.
Zorn, Christa. Vernon Lee: Aesthetics, History, and the Victorian Female Intellectual. Ohio University Press.
8
Reportedly, Lee whisked her friend away from London because she felt that the literary...
Dedications
A. Mary F. Robinson
AMFR
published a book of criticism on French literature, The French Procession, A Pageant of Great Writers, with a dedication to Vernon Lee
.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
240
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
Cultural formation
Mathilde Blind
Nothing is known of MB
's sexuality, but the homosociality of some of her love poetry and her connection to Vernon Lee
's circle is suggestive.