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
.
Our Lady of the Broken Heart, the garden play mentioned in the volume title, is set in a public Italian garden during the seventeenth century, or any time.
Robinson, A. Mary F. Songs, Ballads, and a Garden Play. T. Fisher Unwin.
After marrying Duclaux, she lived with him near Olmet, a tiny hill village in Cantal, a mountainous sub-region of the Auvergne in France. Her old friend Vernon Lee
spent six weeks with them...
Residence
Clementina Black
By 26 November 1886, CB
and her sisters had moved to Fitzroy Street, London. Vernon Lee
described their home as an anti servitoress lodging , meaning that they did their housework themselves.
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press.
131
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press.
255
Reception
Mathilde Blind
Contemporary poet A. Mary F. Robinson
is recorded by Vernon Lee
to have said in 1881 that MB
's poetry was just among the very best written at present.
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
Publishing
A. Mary F. Robinson
In November AMFR
adapted the story of the Magi or the Three Kings as an item in the Contemporary Review's set of Christmas legends. The story, called a The Three Kings, contains a...
Publishing
A. Mary F. Robinson
The next year Robinson published a collection of historical writing, The Fields of France: Little Essays in Descriptive Sociology. Another collection of poetry, The Return to Nature: Songs and Symbols (1904), was dedicated...
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...
politics
Constance Lytton
CL
was conscious of gender issues long before she became a supporter of the women's movement or a suffragist. In 1893 she described herself as so giddy with anger against several groups of her own...
politics
Lady Ottoline Morrell
She became an activist for pacifism, a movement in which she played many roles. She joined the Union for Democratic Control
, whose meetings were soon being held at her home (and whose members included...
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...
Occupation
F. Mabel Robinson
FMR
hoped to become a painter, and devoted most of [her] girlhood to painting
Bainton, George, editor. The Art of Authorship. J. Clarke.
326
before the full development of her interest in social and political issues. Vernon Lee
in Miss Brown, 1884, somewhat...
Literary Setting
A. Mary F. Robinson
The Red Clove, set in Italy, is dedicated to Vernon Lee
,, while Two Sisters, a memory of childhood, addresses Robinson's sister Mabel
. Several poems draw heavily on the world of...
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
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...
Literary responses
Jane Hume Clapperton
A review by Vernon Lee
for The Academy was similarly positive, calling JHC
's book an important,valuable, and noble production, whose primary contribution was its originality: without being actually original in any separate...
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.
