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
.
CPG
's correspondence with Vernon Lee
(on whom she was an important influence) survives among Lee's papers at Somerville College
, Oxford.
Zorn, Christa. Vernon Lee: Aesthetics, History, and the Victorian Female Intellectual. Ohio University Press.
182n9
Scharnhorst writes that her papers once in her daughter's hands were...
Friends, Associates
Mary Agnes Hamilton
The day after war was declared, MAH
was taken to meet Vernon Lee
, a writer she much admired, who was then staying at the London home (44 Bedford Square) of Lady Ottoline
and Philip Morrell
.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Remembering My Good Friends. Jonathan Cape.
73
Textual Features
Mary Agnes Hamilton
She was inspired to write it by a hatred of war, which was encouraged by political activists including such women as Vernon Lee
and Lady Ottoline Morrell
.
Hamilton, Mary Agnes. Remembering My Good Friends. Jonathan Cape.
72-4
Her title comes from a manifesto...
Occupation
Jane Ellen Harrison
Harrison was profoundly affected by criticisms made by MacColl
of her lecturing style and her approach to art. After he voiced his critique in early 1887, she began to focus increasingly on folk religions rather...
Friends, Associates
Henry James
HJ
's circle of acquaintance in the world of letters and the theatre was very wide. As well as men of letters such as Edmund Gosse
, it included a great many women writers, among...
Friends, Associates
Henrietta Camilla Jenkin
In Manchester HCJ
became by 1854 a friend of Elizabeth Gaskell
, who helped her with publishing business.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Letters of Mrs Gaskell. Editors Chapple, J. A. V. and Arthur Pollard, Harvard University Press.
286
Stevenson, Robert Louis, and Fleeming Jenkin. “Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin”. Papers, Literary, Scientific, &c., edited by Sir Sidney Colvin et al., Longmans, Green, p. 1: xi - clxx.
li
To the future writer Vernon Lee
she acted as literary mentor. In July 1871 she...
Friends, Associates
Henrietta Camilla Jenkin
During these last years many friends, both from Edinburgh and from earlier times in HCJ
's life, remained faithful visitors or letter-writers: these included members of the Constable
publishing family, John Ruffini
, and Vernon Lee
.
Stevenson, Robert Louis, and Fleeming Jenkin. “Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin”. Papers, Literary, Scientific, &c., edited by Sir Sidney Colvin et al., Longmans, Green, p. 1: xi - clxx.
cxlvii
Literary responses
Henrietta Camilla Jenkin
The Saturday Review called Once and Again a great advance upon any previous effort of the writer's.
Kirk, John Foster, and S. Austin Allibone, editors. A Supplement to Allibone’s Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors. J. B. Lippincott.
The young Vernon Lee
praised this novel enthusiastically in an Italian article published in La Rivista in October...
In the AthenæumH. F. Chorley
agreed with Brontë, noting that many passages are written with Miss Kavanagh's usual sentiment and delicacy; but we can wish her no better wish than the earliest possible deliverance...
During the 1880's each of MK
's two attempts to go away on holiday coincided with sudden relapses in her mother's condition. Within two days of her first holiday, a visit to Wales with...
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.
