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
.
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
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Her travels enabled her to meet [w]omen from all over the world, fine women, thoughtful progressive women!
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. An Autobiography. Editor Lane, Ann J., University of Wisconsin Press.
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
Emilie Barrington
EB
was criticised by some in her own day and has been further criticised for pursuing famous people in a lion-hunting spirit. Vernon Lee
called her a sort of King Charles dog of the neighbouring...
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
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.
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
...
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...
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
Mathilde Blind
One of her travelling companions (and a close friend) was the New Woman novelist Mona Caird
(famous for her declaration calling the institution of marriage a vexatious failure in the Westminster Review in 1888).
Thesing, William B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 199. Gale Research.
38
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.
