Vernon Lee

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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
Friends, Associates Michael Field
Katharine and Edith Cooper shared a great many distinguished friends in the worlds of literature and aesthetics: Walter Pater , Oscar Wilde , Arthur Symons , Charles Shannon , Sarianna Browning , Thomas Sturge Moore
Friends, Associates F. Mabel Robinson
FMR shared to the full the social involvement of her family with entertaining leading figures in London cultural life: such men as John Singer Sargent , Robert Browning , William Morris , and Oscar Wilde
Friends, Associates Walter Pater
From his time at BrasenoseWP knew Oscar Browning . In Oxford and London he socialized with Edmund Gosse , Algernon Charles Swinburne , Simeon Solomon , Oscar Wilde , Vernon Lee , A. Mary F. Robinson
Friends, Associates Amy Levy
They included Olive Schreiner , the future Beatrice Webb , Dollie Maitland Radford , Margaret Harkness , Clementina Black (whose sister Constance had been a school friend of AL ), and Eleanor Marx . Through...
Friends, Associates Isabella Ormston Ford
Besides the Ford sisters, other members of the UDC included founding member James Ramsay MacDonald , executive committee member Helena Swanwick , and Vernon Lee , who was a good friend of IOF 's sister...
Friends, Associates A. Mary F. Robinson
AMFR and Vernon Lee attended a tea-party at John Singer Sargent 's London studio.
Colby, Vineta. Vernon Lee: A Literary Biography. University of Virginia Press, 2003.
66
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, 1990.
301
They included Jane Addams , Mona Caird , Marie Stritt (who translated Women and Economics into German),...
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 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 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, 1944.
73
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 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 ...
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, 1992.
53-4
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...
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, 1964.
96
Lee corresponded with LV from the late 1870s to the early 1880s and discussed...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Lee, Vernon. Vanitas. W. Heinemann, 1892.
Lee, Vernon. Vernon Lee’s Letters. Editor Cooper-Willis, Irene, Privately printed for the editor for private circulation only, 1937.
Lee, Vernon. Vital Lies. John Lane, 1912, 2 vols.