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
.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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
Residence
A. Mary F. Robinson
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
Textual Features
Amy Levy
The tone of AL
's letters is variable: early, ambitious, mostly exuberant letters are punctuated by flat, throwaway statements of her own worthlessness. To Vernon Lee
she maintained a formal style, addressing her as Miss...
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...
Textual Features
A. Mary F. Robinson
She dedicates A Ballad of Forgotten Tunes to Vernon Lee
, and addresses her by name in its closing stanza. She parodies the style of Pope
in Celia's Homecoming, written for her sister Mabel
Textual Features
A. Mary F. Robinson
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.
She presents herself here explicitly as an urban poet, like the London plane tree, a human-made hybrid. The version printed here of New Love, New Life (originally titled in German and addressed to Vernon Lee
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...
