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 .
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.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Textual Production Virginia Woolf
By 1912 VW had published on Margaret Cavendish (as Duchess of Newcastle), Ann, Lady Fanshawe , Elizabeth Carter , Anna Seward , Elizabeth, Lady Holland , Maria Edgeworth , Lady Hester Stanhope , theBrontë
Friends, Associates Augusta Webster
She also knew Frances Power Cobbe , Vernon Lee , Florence Fenwick Miller , and Mabel Robinson (likely, too, her sister A. Mary F. Robinson , who also wrote for the Athenæum at the same...
Friends, Associates Augusta Webster
Vernon Lee described in a diary entry attending a housewarming party at the Websters' in Hammersmith: An enormous crush, of ill-dressed, eccentric literary pumps. I spoke to Wm Rossetti , Watts , Sharp ...
Literary responses Rosamund Marriott Watson
Vernon Lee had perceived something Athenaeumy in RMW 's writing several years before she appeared in its pages.
Demoor, Marysa. Their Fair Share. Ashgate.
124
Friends, Associates Elizabeth von Arnim
New friendships that EA pursued during her breakup with Wells included those with Vernon Lee , Augustine Birrell , Stanley Owen Buckmaster , and Thomas and Annie Cobden-Sanderson .
Friends, Associates Linda Villari
LV and her husband were both friends of Vernon Lee , accepting her hospitality and moving in the same circles.
Gunn, Peter. Vernon Lee: Violet Paget, 1856-1935. Oxford University Press.
96
Lee corresponded with LV from the late 1870s to the early 1880s and discussed...
Friends, Associates Susan Tweedsmuir
ST 's parents made connections through friendship as remarkable as those made for them by family descent. Her mother was a friend of many writers and intellectuals of both sexes, including Marie Belloc Lowndes ,...
Friends, Associates Ethel Smyth
ES 's many other friends included writer Maurice Baring , Lady Ponsonby , the Empress Eugénie of France, Vernon Lee , and Vita Sackville-West .
Collis, Louise. Impetuous Heart: The Story of Ethel Smyth. William Kimber.
57, 65, 174, 200
St John, Christopher. Ethel Smyth. Longmans, Green.
117-18
Textual Features Ethel Smyth
Major characters in the narrative included Vernon Lee and Henry Brewster .
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
6: 38n1
ES also wrote here, I am the most interesting person I know, and I don't care if no one else thinks...
Friends, Associates Constance Smedley
Their London associates included writers and artists like (besides Margaret Morris herself) Vernon Lee , Gladys Henrietta Schütze or Henrietta Leslie (a next-door neighbour in Chelsea, and with her husband one of the only non-theatrical...
politics Ethel Sidgwick
The Congress, held from 28 April to 1 May, attracted 1,200 women from twelve countries, both warring and neutral, to discuss means of achieving peace. Others meeting with the delegates on the subsequent peace tour...
Friends, Associates Gladys Henrietta Schütze
GHS also knew and loved the greatOlive Schreiner .
Schütze, Gladys Henrietta. More Ha’pence Than Kicks. Jarrolds.
128-9
Vernon Lee , she said, was primarily a friend of her scientist husband; they both stayed with her several times. Schütze pondered the paradox...
Intertextuality and Influence Gladys Henrietta Schütze
As a child GHSimagined that a person, particularly a lady, would have to be something very unusual to produce real books.
Schütze, Gladys Henrietta. More Ha’pence Than Kicks. Jarrolds.
37-8
She was reassured by the ordinary appearance of Effie Adelaide Rowlands (pen-name...
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...
Friends, Associates A. Mary F. Robinson
In June 1881 Vernon Lee stayed with AMFR 's family in London. The next month the friends visited Oxford with Mary's sister Mabel . Their Oxford social life included attending a dinner party hosted by...

Timeline

1895: Thomas Bird Mosher of Portland, Maine, began...

Writing climate item

1895

Thomas Bird Mosher of Portland, Maine, began publishing The Bibelot. A Reprint of Poetry & Prose for Book Lovers, a monthly series later collected as an annual volume, of exquisitely produced editions in tiny press-runs.

5 March 1946: Winston Churchill made a famous speech in...

National or international item

5 March 1946

Winston Churchill made a famous speech in Fulton, Missouri, in which he described an iron curtain coming down across Europe, dividing the east from the west.

Texts

Lee, Vernon. “A Culture-Ghost”. Fraser’s Magazine, Vol.
103
, No. 23, pp. 1-29.
Lee, Vernon. Althea. Osgood and McIlvaine, 1894.
Lee, Vernon. Baldwin. T. Fisher Unwin, 1886.
Lee, Vernon, and Clementina Anstruther-Thomson. Beauty and Ugliness. John Lane, 1912.
Lee, Vernon. Belcaro. W. Satchell, 1881.
Lee, Vernon. Euphorion. T. Fisher Unwin, 1884.
Lee, Vernon. Gospels of Anarchy. T. Fisher Unwin, 1908.
Lee, Vernon. Juvenilia. T. Fisher Unwin, 1887.
Lee, Vernon. “Les aventures d’une pièce de monnaie”. La Famille, No. 10; 12; 14.
Lee, Vernon. Miss Brown. Blackwood and Sons, 1884.
Lee, Vernon. Music and its Lovers. Editor Willis, Irene Cooper, G. Allen and Unwin, 1932.
Lee, Vernon. Ottilie. T. Fisher Unwin, 1883.
Lee, Vernon. Peace with Honour. Union of Democratic Control, 1915.
Lee, Vernon. “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady”. The Yellow Book, Vol.
10
, pp. 289-44.
Lee, Vernon. Proteus. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner; E. P. Dutton, 1925.
Lee, Vernon. Renaissance Fancies and Studies. Smith, Elder, 1895.
Lee, Vernon. Satan the Waster. John Lane, 1920.
Lee, Vernon. Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy. W. Satchell, 1880.
Lee, Vernon, and Maxwell Armfield. The Ballet of the Nations. Chatto and Windus, 1915.
Lee, Vernon. The Countess of Albany. W. H. Allen, 1884.
Lee, Vernon. The Handling of Words. John Lane, 1923.
Lee, Vernon. The Poet’s Eye. Hogarth Press, 1926.
Birch, Sarah. The Prince of the Hundred Soups. Editor Lee, Vernon, T. Fisher Unwin, 1883.
Lee, Vernon. The Psychology of an Art Writer. David Zwimmer Books, 2018.
Lee, Vernon. “Tuscan Peasant Plays”. Fraser’s Magazine, Vol.
95
, No. 15, pp. 224-34.